conscience in revolt

1 07 943

CONSCIENCE IN REVOLX

CONSCIENCE IN
REVOLT

Sixty-four Stories of
Resistance in Germany 1933-45

COLLECTED BY

ANNEDORE LEBER

ASSISTED BY

WILLY BRANDT & KARL DIETRICH BRACHER

WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM

HILDE WALTER
WOLFGANG STEGLICH & HARALD POELCHAU

Introduction by

ROBERT BIRLEY

Headmaster of Eton College

ASSOCIATED BOOKSELLERS

CONN,

Copyright by

VALLENTINE, MITCHELL & CO. LTD

37 Furaival Street, London, EC4

1957

First published in Germany in 1954 under the title of

Das Gewissen Steht Auf

by Mosaik-Verlag, Berlin

Translated from the German by
ROSEMARY O'NEILL

AH photographs in this book are privately owned,
except where otherwise indicated

MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY C. TINLING & CO. LTD
LIVERPOOL, LONDON AND PRESCOT

CONTENTS

Introduction by ROBERT BIRLEY
Preface .....

page
vii

XXV

YOUTH

Introduction

ANTON' SCHMAUS .

HELMUTH HUBENER

HILDA MONTE

JONATHAN STARK .

SOPHIE SCROLL

HEINZ BELLO

FRIEDRICH KARL KLAUSING

MICHAEL KITZELMANN

1

4

7

11

14

16

20

24

27

LEARNING

Introduction ....
CARL VON OSSIETZKY .
FRITZ SOLMITZ
KURTHUBER ....
ELISABETH VON THADDEN .
NIKOLAUS GROSS .
ERICH KNAUF ....
ADOLF REICHWEIN
WALTHER ARNDT .

32
34
38
42
46
49
52
62
66

FRIENDSHIP

Introduction

JOACHIM GOTTSCHALK
LILO GLOEDEN
LOTHAR ERDMANN
GERTRUD SEELE
ERNST HEILMANN
WILLI HAUSSLER
HEINRICH JASPER
HANS SCHIFTAN
JOHANNA KIRCHNER
WILHELM LEUSCHNER .
BERNHARD LETTERHAUS

70

72

76

79

82

86

90

94

97

100

103

107

THE STATE AND THE LAW

Introduction
WALTER GEMPP
MARTIN GAUGER .
HANS VON DOHNANYI

110
112
115
119

page

MARIA TERWIEL 123

ERNST VON HARNACK 127

FRITZ ELSAS 132

JOSEPH WIRMER 136

BERTHOLD SCHENCK

GRAF VON STAUFFENBERG . . 139

ERWIN PLANCK 142

KLAUS BONHOEFFER 145

RUDIGER SCHLEICHER 149

TRADITION

Introduction . 152

ADOLF VON HARNIER ... .155

OTTO KARL KIEP .... .159

KARL FRIEDRICH GOERDELER . . 163

EWALD VON KLEIST SCHMENZIN . . 166

LUDWIG BECK .... .170

HANS OSTER .173

HENNING VON TRESCKOW . .177
ULRICH-WILHELM

GRAF SCHWERIN VON SCHWANENFELD . 180

PETER GRAF YORCK VON WARTENBURG . 184

CHRISTIANITY

Introduction ....

ERICH KLAUSENER .
KARL FRIEDRICH STELLBRINK
BERNHARD LICHTENBERG .
EDITH STEIN ....
MAX JOSEF METZGER .
FRIEDRICH JUSTUS PERELS .
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER
THEO HESPERS
ALFRED DELP
HANS-BERND VON HAEFTEN
HELMUTH JAMES GRAF VON MOLTKE

FREEDOM AND ORDER

Introduction .....

CARLO MIERENDORFF .
THEODOR HAUBACH .
FRTTZ-DIETLOF

GRAF VON DER SCHULENBURG
ADAM VON TROTT ZU SOLZ
JULIUS LEBER ....

CLAUS SCHENCK

GRAF VON STAUFFENBERG

Bibliography

187
190
194
198
203
208
212
216
220
224
227
231

234
238
243

247
251
255

260
264

VI

INTRODUCTION

By Robert Birley Headmaster of Eton College

THE appearance in an English translation of this book on sixty-
four Germans, the representatives of thousands, who died oppos-
ing the Nazis, is timely.

The acceptance of Western Germany as a member of the West
European and Atlantic system of nations has been a decision of
very great difficulty, and has caused political tensions in several
countries, including our own. As long as Germany was entirely
subjugated, the country might be the field of a diplomatic struggle
between East and West, but the German people themselves
seemed hardly to be part of the problem. However, when
Western Germany became a possible partner in an alliance, the
character and traditions of the people could no longer be ignored.
It is not surprising, therefore, that several books, widely pub-
licised and widely read, should have appeared, reminding
Englishmen of the atrocities of the Nazi regime. This book is in
no sense an answer to them. But it is an essential part of the
evidence, and one largely neglected in this country, which must
be considered if the problem of the German people, now, once
more, one of vital urgency, is studied.

There is no answer to the accounts of the Nazi terror. Some
may, perhaps, be inaccurate in points of detail and may at times
rely too confidently on hearsay evidence, but the main facts about
it are quite incontrovertible. This book will not appear, at first, in
any way to lull the fears of those who are alarmed at the prospect
of the rearming of Germany. Rather, the true picture of the
horrors of the time is incomplete without it. But when English-
men ask themselves the questions, which they certainly ought to
ask: 'Can we trust a nation responsible for such deeds? Can we
be morally justified in so dose an association with it? Does such
an association amount to a condonation of the Nazi period in its
history?* They will find this book indispensable, if they are to
find the true answer.

In order to understand this book, it is necessary to know some-
thing of the historical background of the Germany which saw
the rise to power of the Nazis and their twelve years* rule. Not
that a study of history will easily explain this phenomenon:
Never before in European history has there been anything so

vii

astounding as the Nazi revolution. The rest of Europe was quite
unprepared for such a cataclysmic return to barbarism. The first
world war was a terrible catastrophe, but ten years later what
seemed most obvious was the resilience of Europe, its ability to
recover from the disaster. In 1928 an eminent English fudge, Lord
Maugham, wrote in a study of the case of Jean Galas, "Things
have changed very greatly in the west of Europe since the year
1761, and we can be assured that the tragiohistory of Jean Galas
can never be repeated. The essential change is in the direction
of greater humanity. A complete toleration of the religious views
of others, a hatred of cruelty to man or beast, a more generous
sympathy with others and a public opinion whose power is
scarcely yet fully realised these are the things which in a com-
plex, unsatisfactory and often disquieting civilisation, may reason-
ably give us hope for the future of the world.' Five years later
Europe saw established in one of its greatest countries a govern-
ment which quite openly used as one of its chief weapons the
ruthless infliction of physical pain. A few days saw the establish-
ment, as part of the normal order of things, of the Concentration
Camp: there had never been anything so horrible before in
European history. A study of historical events, one might think,
should be able to explain the violence which usually accompanies
revolutions, excesses such as those which marked the Wars of
Religion or the Terror' under the Committee of Public Safety in
1793 and 1794, but not this deliberate and organised system of
cruelty.

Europe saw a return to the world of the Apocalypse. How
pointless, how incongruous the absurd figures from that book
have come to appear, the 'great red dragon, having seven heads
and ten horns', the beast which had 'a mouth speaking great
things and blasphemies', the other beast which 'exertiseth all the
power of the first beast before him'. One day, not long after the
end of the war, I visited the Spielberg, the great fortress standing
above the town of Brno, in Czechoslovakia. It had been the head-
quarters of the Gestapo in that country, the scene of unimaginable
cruelties. The chapel of the castle had been turned into a place of
worship for the new Nazi pagan religion, and after the war the
Czechs had left it untouched. In place of the altar was a huge
block of stone, with an Iron Cross carved on the front, and on it
was placed, lit with electric lights, the Gospel of the new religion,
Hitler's Mein Kampf. Above, where before had hung a picture
of the crucified Christ, was fixed an immense eagle, carved in
viii

stone, its talons reaching downwards. Never since then have the
figures of the Book etRevelations seemed to me absurd or unreal.

We feel, indeed, that we are beyond the sphere of History.
Yet these things actually happened, and we must examine, of
necessity very shortly, the history of the period.

Germany at the end of the First World War established a
parliamentary republican government. Mr J. W. Wheeler-Bennett,
in his book, The Nemesis of Power: the German Army in Politics,
1918-1945, has seen in an incident on the very first day of its estab-
lishment, 9 November 1918, the fatal decision which ultimately
condemned it to futility. A Socialist government was formed in
Berlin under Fritz Ebert, which was at its birth menaced by a
Communist revolution. That night over the telephone he came to
an agreement with the Army. If the Government would restore
order and co-operate with the Officer Corps in suppressing
Bolshevism and in the maintenance of discipline in the Army, the
High Command would bring the Army peacefully home and the
safety of the Government would be assured. Thus, in half a
dozen sentences over the telephone line, a pact was concluded
between a defeated Army and a tottering semi-revolutionary
regime; a pact destined to save both parties from the extreme
elements of revolution, but, as a result of which, the Weimar
Republic was doomed at birth/ With the support of the Army,
even after it had been reduced by the Treaty of Versailles to
100,000 men, the Government was able to suppress attempts to
overthrow it from the Left and the Right. Credit must be allowed,
however and it is often denied ^to the German civilian states-
men of the first years of the Weimar Republic. They saw it
through the crisis when the allied peace terms were almost
rejected; the militarist coup d&<& known as the Kapp Putsch, in
March 1920, when indeed the Army all but abandoned it; the
crisis in 1923, when Germany failed to pay reparations and the
French occupied the Ruhr; and the great Inflation of 1924, After
this the Republic sailed into calmer waters. The attempt to exact
reparations from Germany was tacitly abandoned, the allied
troops were withdrawn from the Rhineland, and the Locarno
Treaty of 1925 paved the way for the admission of Germany to
the League of Nations. With the election of Hindenburg as
President in April 1925, the conservative parties seemed to have
accepted the Republic, which up till then had had little real
support, except from the socialist and the more liberal elements
of the middle classes.

The Republic, however, was very far from safe. The Free Corps,
illegal bands of unemployed and disappointed soldiers, called
into being during the months of anarchy after the war, were dis-
solved in 1920, but many continued to exist as secret societies.
The Communists, defeated in their initial attempt to seize power,
were able to poll nearly two million votes for their candidate in
the Presidential Election of 1925. Revolutionary groups proli-
ferated; among them, with its leader an obscure ex-corporal, Adolf
Hitler, the National Socialist German Workers' Party. This had
attempted a coup cTStat in Munich in 1923, which had failed
ignominiously, but it somehow kept in being for the next few
years. And the comparative economic prosperity of this period
was an illusion.

The Republic was not nearly strong enough to resist the impact
of the great industrial depression, which began in 1929. No
one who was in Germany during this great disaster could fail
to recognise its effects, the sense of frustration and despair which
overwhelmed, in particular, the youth of the nation. It is more
difficult to blame the German Government for failing to deal
with this crisis than for its policy during the more prosperous
period before it The Chancellor, Heinrich Briining, was the most
honest and certainly one of the ablest statesmen of the Weimar
regime. But he was never in a position to control the situation.
The Reichstag gave him little support and he was forced to try
to uphold a parliamentary regime by the use of decrees which
received no parliamentary authority.

Englishmen should realise the difference between the situation
in their own country and that in Germany during these critical
years. Here the economic policy of the National Government may
have been faulty, but the Government received solid backing at
elections and in parliament. In Germany the Government could
never rely on a parliamentary majority. Here the economic
foundations of the country proved strong enough to stand the
shock; in Germany they had never really recovered from the
anarchy after the war and the inflation of 1924. Here the Com-
munists were far too weak to make much capital out of a situation
which was apparently so favourable to them; in Germany they
were a large and well-organised party, skilled in the use of
political violence and always ready to resort to it. And in Germany
there was a party and a leader ready to exploit the situation.

The Nazis did not come to power as a result of an electoral
victory. In July 1932, they became the largest party in the

Reichstag with 230 seats, more than double their previous number,
but in a house of 630 members this was some way from a majority.
The Social Democrats and the two Catholic parties had together
exactly the same number. In November of the same year at
another election their number declined to 196. Local elections in
December showed that the loss of ground was continuing. And
yet, on 30 January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor, being placed
in this position as the result of intrigues by the Army and
Nationalist leaders. Six weeks later, with the Communists
eliminated by force, all the political parties, except the Social
Democrats, united to place full powers in his hands. A few months
later they all accepted dissolution without a murmur. In this way,
without any long drawn out civil war, the revolution took place.
It was the most appalling catastrophe in European history.

If one tries to discover in German history the reasons for this
disaster, one finds oneself reciting a kind of parody of the House
that Jack built The Nazis came into power because of the failure
of the Weimar regime. The difficulties of this regime were quite
genuine. What else could Ebert have done on the night of
9 November 1918? Without the support of the Army for the
Government, a Communist dictatorship seemed certain. Why
were the Germans unable to form a strong government without
relying on the Army? Because under the Empire they had never
gained any true experience of parliamentary rule or any sense of
democratic responsibility. Why was this? Because under Bismarck
Germany had gained her legitimate goal of political unity through
military victory. Why had she been compelled to accomplish it in
this way? Because her attempt to do so by parliamentary means
in 1848 had failed, so that Bismarck could say with truth 'What
Germany wants in Prussia is not her liberalism, but her strength/
Why was the revolution of 1848 such a failure? Because the
German principalities had been able to prevent the growth of
liberal nationalism during the years of the French Revolution.
Why were these principalities in a position to do this? Why was
German unity so long delayed? Because Germany had failed
during the later Middle Ages and the sixteenth century to develop,
as France had done, into a National State. And so it goes on, until
one may find oneself wondering whether the ultimate cause was
not that Germany never became part of the Roman Empire. Was
the reason in the end largely geographical, that Germany in the
first century B.C. was a land of forests and swamps, which made
any political cohesion impossible, compared with Gaul, which was

xi

already a country with roads down which armies might march
and enough unity at least to make it conquerable?

The whole process can be made to appear quite inevitable-
until one remembers that other nations do not seem to have been
so completely at the mercy of events. If they were able to attain
a happier state of affairs, it was as a result of political decisions,
taken by resolute men, ready to sacrifice themselves to secure
them. They were acts of will. What seems to be missing in
German history is the determination to control events, except in
certain individuals, such as Bismarck and Hitler, who were ready
to exploit this failing in the German character.

The Nazis, then, obtained power as the result of a surrender, a
surrender especially by the more conservative elements in
Germany. Even after the election of Hindenburg as President,
they had steadily refused to accept responsibility for the govern-
ment of the country. This goes far to explain the difficulties of
those who opposed Hitler once he had gained power. There was
no tradition on which a movement of resistance could be built,
except among the Social Democrats, who were always a minority,
and among the Communists, who were anxious to set up one land
of totalitarian regime in place of another. We must recognise also
how the nature of the modern state, more powerful than any
state has ever been before, plays into the hands of a totalitarian
government. Opposition to any regime now needs a tradition that
the government should itself make opposition possible.

Once the Nazi government came into existence, the great
majority of Germans simply accepted it as inevitable. After all,
most people in any country do not concern themselves much with
politics, they merely ask to be allowed to live their own lives and
do their own work. But it is futile for the Germans to excuse
themselves by saying that they did not know what was happening.
Most, no doubt, were not aware of the full horror of the Con-
centration Camps. But no party has ever been more open in
avowing its aims and methods than were the Nazis. One had only
to see them walking down the street to realise perfectly well
what land of people they were.

A far more serious charge lies against those, especially the
well-educated, who in various ways actively supported the Nazi
government, although they did not accept its principles. Not long
after the Nazi revolution, a professor at one of the Rhineland
universities, a genuine opponent, who had later to flee the
country, had cause to visit the Ministry of Education in Berlin,
xii

There he was astonished to meet among the officials one of his
former colleagues, whom he knew to be no supporter of the
Nazis. This man felt it necessary to excuse himself: 'Do not mis-
judge me/ he said, 1 am not a Nazi. Very few of us here are. They
have put in a few members of the Party, of course, but they are
quite useless. They have no idea what administration means. It
is the rest of us who keep the Ministry going. No, we are not
Nazis. We call ourselves the "Spezis" (Spezidisten : specialists)/
This was worse than a conscious abandonment of responsibility;
it was a complete failure to realise that they had any responsibility
at all. Even then, one must recognise the dilemma in which many
were placed who did not approve of Nazi rule or were even
disgusted by it. Opposition would mean not only disaster, and
quite possibly torture and death for themselves, but also utter
ruin for their families. It is difficult for Englishmen to blame them.
We have never been faced with such a dilemma. Nor need one
wholly discount the plea, so often advanced, that they knew that,
if they abandoned office, they would only be replaced by men
who would carry out the intentions of the Nazis more vigorously.
In a sense, there was no Resistance Movement in Germany
against the Nazis. In a modern totalitarian state such a move-
ment is only possible if there is widespread popular feeling
against the tyranny, as when a country is militarily occupied, and
even then it depends on the hope of help from outside. Most men
will only resist if they feel that an alternative government is at
least possible. For the first five years of Nazi rule there could be
little more than isolated acts of resistance and these could hardly
take the form of more than outspoken criticism. For some time,
however, there existed many groups of active opponents in the
factories, who kept the spirit of resistance alive by secret meet-
ings and the distribution of illegal pamphlets and who were in
touch with German political exiles abroad. Among their leaders
were Alwin Brandes and Else Nieviera. Brandes, a former Chair-
man of the Metal Workers' Union, was at the head of a whole net-
work of such groups, which was broken up by the Gestapo at die
beginning of 1936. Else Nieviera, also a prominent Trade
Unionist, had done remarkable work among the women textile
workers. The group, of which she was the leader, tried to keep in
close touch with Trade Unions abroad but was broken up in the
spring of 1939; she was herself sentenced to two and a half years*
imprisonment and was killed in an air-raid in 1944 Altogether,
thousands of workers suffered in concentration camps during this

xiii

early period. Their history is almost unknown in this country.
There were writers also who were not prepared to be subservient
to the government, like Carl von Ossietzky who figures in this
book, and, above all, Rudolf Pechel, the editor of the Deutsche
Rundschau, the most resolute of all literary opponents of the
Nazis, who survived imprisonment in concentration camps and
is one of the leading political writers in Germany today. Some of
the figures in this book belong to these early years of the tyranny
and their lonely heroism is in some ways the finest of all.

In the meantime Hitler had crushed the dissidents in his own
party and had murdered many of his old political opponents in
the appalling massacres of 30 June 1934. A month later, on
1 August, Hindenburg died and Hitler succeeded him as Leader
and Chancellor. Next day the whole Army took the Oath of
Allegiance to him. It was, perhaps, his greatest victory. For the
Army was the only power in Germany which could possibly resist
the Nazis successfully. It was not until the great crisis of
February 1938, when Hitler outmanoeuvred the generals and
himself became War Minister, that a movement grew up in the
Army itself which was ready to overthrow the regime. It was to
lead eventually to the great conspiracy of 20 July 1944. Because it
is so much better documented, there is some danger that its
development, along with that of various civilian groups closely
connected with it, may come to be regarded as the only mani-
festation of resistance in Germany during the war. This book is
enough to show that there were others.

Let Sophie Scholl, some of whose letters are printed here, stand
for those whose resistance was a more desperate and lonely act
of defiance. She belonged, with her brother, Hans, to a secret
society of students at Munich University, known as the White
Rose, who were assisted by one of their professors, Kurt Huber,
of whom also an account will be found here. The group, which
had been distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets, came into the open in
February 1943, when the Nazi Gauleiter of Bavaria addressed
the students on their patriotic duty. Characteristically, he called
on the girls to bear a child each year of their studentship as their
contribution to the nation. The students spontaneously demon-
strated against him and three days later Hans and Sophie Scholl
and other members of the White Rose scattered pamphlets, which
Huber had written, from a balcony in the University. They were
arrested, tortured and brought before the People's Court, which
had been constituted by Hitler to deal with any manifestations
3dv

against the government, under its President, Roland Freisler. His
is a name which will often be met with in this book. In the whole
long roll in history of judges who have used their position to show
their venom and cruelty, his is without a peer. The brother and
sister, with another student, were condemned to death on 18 April,
and hanged. Huber and three other students were executed a
few days later. Sophie's bearing at her trial was magnificent.
Reading of it is like reading the trial of Joan of Arc. The roles
seem to be reversed: it is the prisoner who prosecutes.

Archbishop Temple said in 1943 that 'the one effective centre
of resistance to Nazi oppression in Germany has been the
Christian Church'. That may have gone too far. In the Protestant
Churches in Germany there was a strong tradition against any
intrusion into the political sphere; the Vatican concluded a
Concordat with the Nazi government within six months of its
establishment. It was not until some years later that the Churches
can be regarded as in any way officially opposing the Nazis. But
all the time there were individuals who protested and refused to
accept the persecution of the Jews. Few finer statements were
made against the Nazis than one by von Galen, the Roman
Catholic Bishop of Miinster, always an opponent of the regime.
In a sermon in his Cathedral after a devastating air-raid on the
city, he asked his congregation whether, when they had fled from
their burning homes, they had remembered how the Jews had had
to do the same on the night of the great pogrom of November
1938. Hundreds of Protestant Pastors, who joined the movement
of the Confessional Church against the Nazi attempt to gain
control of the Evangelical Church, suffered in concentration
camps; many ware executed. The resistance of Pastor Niemoller
was the one act of opposition to the Nazis which was well known
at the time to people in this country.

At least half of the persons of whom we read in this book, how-
ever, were members of the movement which reached its end on
20 July 1944. It may help the English reader if some account is
given of it, with a description of the main groups of which it was
composed, and also if some of the characters in the book are
specially referred to.

The leading figure in the Army opposing Hitler was Ludwig
Beck, Chief of the General Staff from 1935 to 1938. A remarkable
number of the German generals were, at one time or another,
fully aware of the plots against Hitler, even though most of them
did no more than wait to see which way the cat would jump.

rv

Among those who were wholly in support of the movement, how-
ever, were General (later Field-Marshal}.von Witzleben; General
von Tresckow, who had first supported the Nazis, but was to
become one of the main figures in the conspiracy during the war;
and General Olbricht, in 1944 Chief of the General Army Office
and deputy to the Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army.
One important group was to be found, incongruously enough, in
the Abwehr, or Military Intelligence Service, whose head, Admiral
Canaris, gave shelter in his organisation to many of the opponents
of the regime, the most active of whom was General Oster.

We may consider next some highly placed civilians, of whom
the most important was Karl Goerdeler, Mayor of Leipzig from
1923 to 1937, who had resigned from the post of Price Com-
missioner under the Nazi government when he saw that Hitler's
economic policy was directed to a war, and from his Mayoralty
in protest at the persecution of the Jews. With General Beck, he
was the leader of the resistance to the Nazis; if the conspiracy
had been successful Beck would have become Reichsverweser,
or Head of the State, and Goerdeler Chancellor. Professor Popitz,
who was Prussian Minister of Finance, represented the most con-
servative element in the conspiracy. Ulrich von Hassell, one of the
leading German diplomats, had been Ambassador in Rome until
1937. His Diaries, which were preserved, tell us much of its
history.

A very important part was played by a group of younger men,
some of the leading members of which were closely related to
one another: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had been Pastor of the
Lutheran Church in London, was one of the chief figures in the
Confessional Church, which led the resistance of the German
Protestants to the Nazis; his brother, Klaus Bonhoeffer; their two
brothers-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, the ablest organiser in the
group until his early arrest, who was from the first in touch with
Beck and Oster, and Professor Rlidiger Schleicher. One member
of the group, who miraculously survived, was Fabian von
Schlabrendorff, and his book, Offiziere gegen Hitler, gives an
account of the conspiracy which perhaps brings us nearer to an
understanding of the difficulties of the enterprise and of the
courage of those who resisted Hitler, than any other.

Helmut Graf von Moltke was the leader of a group, known as
the Kreisau Circle, from his home in Silesia, where they often
met. It should not be thought of as in any way an organised
society, but among its members were most of those who, one
xvi

feels, had realised that opposition to Hitler made necessary a new
and dynamic political philosophy, and that a return to the
Germany of pre-Nazi days was no longer practicable. It started
at the beginning of the war as a group of personal friends, in par-
ticular von Moltke and his cousin, Peter Yorck von Wartenburg.
Among them was Adam von Trott zu Solz, a former Rhodes
Scholar of Balliol College, and Hans-Bernd von Haeften, who
were young members of the Foreign Office; representatives of the
Churches, such as Father Alfred Delp and the Protestant Dr
Eugen Gerstenmaier, one of the three men at the very centre of
the conspiracy on 20 July who escaped, and now President of the
Bundestag. In friendly relations with it were some leading mem-
bers of the Social Democrat Party, Julius Leber, whose widow
has written this book he would have been Minister of the
Interior, if the plot had succeeded: what would he not have
given to Germany and to Europe if he had survived Carlo
Mierendorff, who was killed in an air-raid, Theodor Haubach and
Adolf Reichwein. Of all four we may read in this book. The
Kreisau Circle was to be deeply divided over the question of
Hitler's assassination, which von Moltke could never accept as
justifiable, but more than any other group they looked forward to
the future and the death of nearly all of them was an irreparable
loss to Germany after the war.

In May 1938, Hitler announced to his generals his decision to
crush Czechoslovakia by the early autumn. They protested at
what seemed to them to be a militarily indefensible policy.
Hitler rejected their protest and Beck, then Chief of the General
Staff, resigned. During the summer the first steps were taken in
bringing together the various groups opposing Hitler and the
association began between Beck and Goerdeler, which was to
last until the final disaster six years later. A plan was evolved,
largely under the direction of Oster, to seize Hitler as soon as he
had ordered a war with Czechoslovakia and bring hityi to trial
It was supported by General Haider, who had succeeded Beck as
Chief of the General Staff; von Witzleben, then in command of the
troops near Berlin; the Police-President of Berlin; his second-in-
command, Graf Fritz-Dietiof von der Schulenburg, and others.
Whether the complete collapse of the plot, which was never
attempted at all, was due to the decision of the British and French
governments to abandon Czechoslovakia is one of the still un-
solved problems of History. In any case, the intentions of many
of those involved, like Haider, who now fades out of the picture,

xvii

was not so much to eliminate Hitler as to prevent him from start-
ing a war which in their view would be disastrous for Germany.
The whole episode, however, made the task of those genuinely
opposed to the Nazis far more difficult in the future, since Hitler's
position in Germany was immeasurably stronger after the allied
surrender at Munich.

For the next four years, though numerous plans were evolved,
the chances of a successful coup against Hitler were small, owing
to his extraordinary series of successes. But during these years the
various strands in the Resistance were slowly wound together.
Already among those who had been involved in the planning of
the utterly abortive plot before Munich were several in the group
to which the Bonhoeffers belonged. They now served in posts
which brought them into doser touch with the military leaders.
Von Dohnanyi and Otto Kiep, another member, joined the Intel-
ligence at the beginning of the war and served under Oster, and
Yorck von Wartenburg was on the staff of von Witzleben. Nothing
could be done, however, without the Army. There was a moment,
after Hitler had announced his intention, on the successful con-
clusion of the Polish campaign, at once to attack in the West,
when the Generals, led again by Haider, came near to forestalling
what they expected to be a disastrous campaign, in the same
way as they had planned the year before. But the Generals
fumbled and Hitler changed his mind.

It is impossible to say when the opponents of Nazism came to
the conclusion that the only solution was to assassinate Hitler.
Beck and Goerdeler only came slowly to accept it; many of the
Kreisau Circle, and von Moltke in particular, were never able to
do so. In August 1941, however, a definite plan to kill Hitler,
when he visited the Headquarters of General Bock in Russia, was
formed by General von Tresckow, who was on Bock's staff, and
von Schlabrendorff, his A.D.C. But Hitler was far too well
guarded for it to be carried out. This was only the first of his
escapes from assassination, each one more astonishing than the
last.

The Kreisau Circle, as has been shown, combined persons of
very diverse political views. The association of this group with
those which had already accepted the leadership of Beck and
Goerdeler made something much more like a Resistance Move-
ment January 1943, with the end of the battle of Stalingrad,
marked the turn of the tide in the war. On 22 January von Hassell
wrote in his Diary: 'If the Generals had it in mind to withhold
xviii

their intervention until it was absolutely clear that the corporal is
leading us into disaster, they have had their dream fulfilled.* But
most of the generals were only ready to act when Hitler was
actually dead, and all the plots to assassinate him were abortive.
The members of the movement have sometimes been charged as
incompetent amateurs for their run of ill-success. That they were
amateurs is indeed true. Men like von Schlabrendorff, who once
succeeded in introducing two delayed action bombs, in a case of
brandy, on to Hitler's aeroplane they failed to explode were
not professional assassins, but honourable men forced to under-
take assassination after deep searchings of heart. The profes-
sionals were on the other side.

It cannot be said that all those in the conspiracy were even
reasonably careful. Goerdeler, in particular, talked a great deal
too much. It is, in fact, suiprising that the Gestapo did not find out
more than it did. In course of time, however, a certain amount
inevitably was discovered. In April 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
and von Dohnanyi were arrested and Canaris was forced to dis-
miss Oster from active employment. In January 1944, the Gestapo
seized von Moltke and Otto Kiep. The latter had belonged to a
group sometimes known as the Solf Circle. Under the inspiration
of Frau Solf, the widow of one of the greatest diplomats of the
Weimar Republic and a firm opponent of the Nazis, this group
of people had done much to assist those sought by the Gestapo to
escape from the country. Among its members was Elizabeth von
Thadden, the headmistress of a well-known school for girls,
another of the victims of the Nazis who are to be found in this
book. A Gestapo spy attended a meeting at her house. Later, all
those who had been present were arrested, and also von Moltke,
who had been a friend of Otto Kiep. Elizabeth von Thadden had
actually nothing to do with the great conspiracy; she was, in fact,
quite unaware of it.

At this stage the most remarkable figure in the whole move-
ment, Glaus Schenck Graf von Stauffenberg, took over the initiative
in organising the conspiracy. The fact that he actually carried out
himself the final attempt on Hitler's life may give a false impression
of his r6Ie and of his personality. It was indeed typical of him to
undertake himself the most dangerous task of all. But he was also
a very fine organiser and, what is more, a young man with the
makings of a great statesman. Very severely wounded in North
Africa in 1942, he was later appointed to be Chief of Staff to
General Olbricht, who was by now a leading member of the con-

xk

spiracy. The cousin of Yorck von Wartenburg, he became in-
terested in the Kreisau Circle. Under his inspiration Beck agreed
to the inclusion of the socialist leaders, Leber and Leuschner, in
the future government of Germany. Later, Adolf Reichwein
arranged a meeting at which Leber met some of the Communist
leaders. The activities of the Communists against the Nazis cannot
be ignored. Their actions have been quite unconnected with
those of whom we have been speaking and they were, as was to
be expected, directly in the service of Russia. Leber considered
it important to find out how they would react if Hitler were
assassinated. It was a tragedy that on this occasion one of those
present was a spy, and that, as a result, both Leber and Reichwein
were arrested.

After all these arrests it was decided that the plot must go
forward, whether Hitler was successfully assassinated or not. The
first move in the plan was to use those army officers who were in
sympathy with the movement to set in motion troops who would
seize Berlin and contain die Nazi SS there. As the Army was half
expecting a rising of the SS against itself, it was thought that the
troops would be ready to move without too great suspicion. As
soon as possible more troops would be brought in from more
distant commands to finish off the SS in Berlin. It was hoped that,
once Hitler had been assassinated, the leaders of the Army would
support the coup and accept the authority of Beck as head of the
State and of von Witzleben as Commander-in-Chief. Von
Stauffenberg, who had recently been appointed Chief of Staff to
General Fromm, the Commander of the Home Army, was due to
represent him at a conference at Hitler's Headquarters in East
Prussia, the so-called Wolfschanze or Wolfs Lair, and was to
carry out the assassination. Much was seen to depend on Fromm
himself, who was well aware of much that was going on under his
nose but had not committed himself. If, on hearing that Hitler
was dead, he refused to join in the coup, he would be supplanted
by General Hoepner.

Von Stauffenberg flew to the Wolfschanze on the morning of
20 July with Werner, brother of Hans-Bernd von Haeften. He
entered the Conference Room, a large wooden hut, where General
Heusinger, Deputy Chief of die General Staff, was explaining to
Hitler the situation on the Eastern front. Then he placed under
the table, on which were spread the maps needed for the meet-
ing, his brief-case, in which was a bomb timed to go off in a few
minutes, and left the room, ostensibly to make a telephone call.
xx

He waited outside the hut until he saw the devastating results of
the explosion, which took place at ten minutes to one o'clock.
Then, fully satisfied with the result, von Stauffenberg and Werner
von Haeften entered a waiting car, drove to the airport and
returned at once to Berlin, which they reached about two and a
half hours later.

But Hitler had not been killed or even seriously injured. He
had been saved by the massive table under which the bomb had
been placed. What is more, the general in charge of the com-
munications at Headquarters, who was himself in the plot, failed
to disrupt the telephone exchange and to inform those in Berlin
of what had happened.

In Berlin, the members of the conspiracy met at the War
Ministry and waited for news from Hitler's Headquarters. There
was nothing but an ominous silence. Soon after half past three,
however, Werner von Haeften rang up from the airport of Berlin
and told them that the attempt had been successful. Von
Stauffenberg and he went straight to join the others at the War
Ministry; orders were despatched at once by telephone to the
troops near Berlin and the initial moves of the coup were carried
out. General Fromm, however, insisted on telephoning to the
Wolfschanze, from which he was told that Hitler had only been
slightly injured. The conspirators then seized him and those other
officers at the Ministry who refused to accept the authority of
von Witzleben as Commander-in-Chief . But already the plot was
going awry. From the Wolfschanze, Field Marshal Keitel, the
Chief of the Supreme Command, was ordering German armies
spread all over Europe to disregard all orders unless they came
from Himmler or himself. An astonishing battle of telephone calls
was waged, von Stauffenberg from the War Ministry insisting in
his turn that the Army Commanders were only to obey orders
from von Witzleben or Hoepner. In Paris, the SS were actually
seized and disarmed. At six in the evening an announcement over
the wireless informed the German people that Hitler was alive.

The coup could now hardly succeed. The end came when Major
Remer, an officer commanding one of the regiments which had
been ordered to Berlin as part of the plot, saw Goebbels, who
arranged for him to speak to Hitler direct. He was ordered to
seize the War Ministry. Before he did so, however, Fromm and
the other officers there, who had been arrested, succeeded in
escaping and turned the tables on their captors. Beck was allowed
to commit suicide. Four of the conspirators, among them Glaus

Schenck von Stauffenberg and Werner von Haeften, were shot at
once in the courtyard of the Ministry, for Fromm wished to silence
all those who could tell of his own hesitations and his doubtful
loyalty to Hitler. But before he could organise the execution of
the rest, Gestapo officials arrived and arrested them. Among those
of whom we read in this book were Yorck von Wartenburg, Fritz-
Dietiof von Schulenburg, Hans Bernd von Haeften, Berthold von
Stauffenberg and Ulrich Wilhelm Schwerin von Schwanenfeld.
At midnight Hitler spoke to the German people and all was over,
except the hunting down of the members of the Resistance, the
interrogations, the torturings, the trials before the People's
Court under the Presidency of Freisler and the executions of
some thousands implicated in the conspiracy.

After the end of the war I worked for two and a half years in
Germany and I was left with one very strong impression, that
thousands of men and women in that country during the period
of Nazi rule had found themselves faced with what seemed to be
an impossible dilemma. They did not approve of the regime;
many felt utterly ashamed of it. But what were they to do?
Resistance seemed quite futile, and what would happen to their
wives or husbands, their parents or children, if they made their
protest? Most men and women are not strong enough to solve
such a dilemma, and certainly someone who has not had to live in
a totalitarian country has no right to condemn them. In Germany
I had at one time to work with four Land Ministers of Education:
three of them had been in concentration camps (two were
Socialists and one had been a Deputy of the Catholic Centre
Party); the fourth, who had been a Headmaster, was dismissed
from his post the moment the Nazis gained power. We used to
meet regularly to discuss our common problems, and I never met
them without wondering whether I could have shown the courage
they had shown. It is a sign of the decadence of a civilisation when
ordinary men and women must expect to face an impossible
dilemma. But those whose deaths are recorded in this book and
the photographs of each one of them bring them very near to us
were most of them not very remarkable people and they solved
the dilemma.

In this lies their importance for the future, and not only the
future of Germany. We should not forget that all those in
Germany today who believe in freedom, the claims of conscience
and the sacredness of truth, carry with them always the burden
xxii

of a terrible memory; the memory of a complete defeat when the
Nazis gained power. This is the most serious of all the weaknesses
in Germany today. Something, I believe, can be done if they can
be convinced that there are those in other countries who are
ready to help them. But the only thing that can really lighten the
burden is the memory that there were those who were not
defeated.

It is not enough for us to say that all this happened in another
country and could not happen here. We may indeed believe that
it could not, but that is irrelevant. For, if there is no condonation
of the Germans in suggesting that they did not really know what
was happening, there is none for us either. The Nazis, when
they cynically avowed their ends and their means, spoke across
the frontiers. We knew quite well what was meant by the murders
of 30 June 1934. We read at the time of the persecution of the
Jews and quite enough about the concentration camps to know
what they stood for. And yet, until war began, how pitifully little
we did to let those who resisted the Nazis in Germany feel that
they had even sympathisers in this country.

Not long after the end of the war the Protestant Church in
Germany said in a famous declaration that the guilt for the
crimes of the Nazis lay with the whole German people. It was a
courageous statement and I know that it found an echo in the
minds of many in Germany. But the concept of national guilt is
one to which it is difficult to give any meaning. Guilt can only
be purged by sacrifice, and, by the mercy of God, provided that
men's hearts are touched, by vicarious sacrifice. That is the
historic rdle of martyrs. It was the r61e of the sixty-four men and
women representatives, let it not be forgotten, of thousands of
others whose stand for conscience is related in this book.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer had said that the resistance to the Nazis must
be 'an act of repentance*.

I remember meeting the author one evening in December 1948,
in Berlin, during the blockade. Frau Leber had been addressing
an election meeting in what must have been one of the strangest
elections that ever took place. They were held, of course, only in
West Berlin. Which party won did not seem very important. What
mattered was that free elections were being carried out in a
beleaguered city in the middle of the Soviet Zone erf Germany. I
remember that I said that in all elections it became clear long
before what were the dominant issues and I asked her which
they were in this one. There is only one issue,' she replied, 'and

xxiii

it is the old question : Are you, or are you not, against the con-
centration camp? We should not forget that in Eastern and
Central Europe there are thousands today who face the same
dilemma as did the men and women in this book, and that there
are those who are making the same answer. For these men and
women, who raised the Revolt for Conscience against the Nazis,
are not yet merely figures in a page of history. They fell in the
struggle against the totalitarian state which still continues, and it
will be long before the cause for which they died will have been
won.

xxiv

Preface to the Original German Edition

I FIR ST thought of writing this book many years ago when I saw
some photographs taken in the People's Court, apparently by
order of the highest Gestapo authorities, during the trials which
foUowed the attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944. At the time,
neither the general public nor the families of those concerned
knew of their existence, but after the final collapse of Germany in
1945 they were made available to me.

Even at first glance I felt that these photographs explained
more powerfully than any words the realities of life under a
modern totalitarian dictatorship. Here is the individual going out
to meet his fate: he emerges from the countless mass of Nazi
victims, known and unknown, to give his own personal testimony.
We are confronted by his courage, his suffering and his spiritual
strength. He commands our attention and asks whether we under-
stand, or whether we want to evade the real issue.

Since then I have given much thought to the question of finding
the right framework for these documents of recent German his-
tory. I wanted to present them in a manner which would make
more generally understood the individual need to protest against
tyranny, and I felt that the strength of the spirit that withstood all
the grisly methods of the totalitarian state should stand out as the
connecting link in the story of resistance and endurance.

There were men and women, young and old, of all classes and
from all parts of the country, who could not and would not come
to terms with injustice, and sooner or later they resisted. Resent-
ment and rebellion brought together people of every kind and
drove them to action, and in the end their outraged consciences
found a common outlet on 20 July 1944. This book, published
ten years later, is dedicated to their memory.

After much thought I decided to present a more general picture
and for this purpose to collect other stories. But difficulties soon
arose. Circumstances made it hard to get hold of material from
the Eastern Zone of Germany; relatives and friends had
either died or were difficult to contact; photographs and docu-
ments had been lost in the confusion of the immediate post-war
years. As a result many personal stories have never come to light
For all that, the most difficult task was to make a selection from
the wealth of material which was available without implying that

xxv

the selected cases were of greater significance than the rest This
book does not claim to tell the complete story, but simply to
convey in the stories of the life and death of sixty-four people the
motives and manner of resistance. The task of finding the right
framework for further studies to fill in the gaps which a book of
this kind must inevitably leave, will be well worth while.

But an ambitious task is absorbing, and one is almost sad when
even a part of it is finished. That this book appears at all is due to
the help and encouragement of the relations and friends of the
men and women whose stories it tells, whom we in Germany
have lost and whom we miss so much today, and it therefore
incorporates many of the thoughts and views of the people who
were closest to them.

Human beings, seeking, hoping, straying, struggling, suffering
that is what they were. In them, as in each of us all, conflicting
forces wrestled with one another. They stood the test, for their
conscience was strong enough in the hour of decision. By some
unexpected stroke of fate any one of us might find himself in a
similar position, and we hardly dare to say how we should con-
duct ourselves; and all the less so in face of the complicated
political and social situation of today, which might so easily
present us with desperately difficult decisions.

Perhaps we might react the right way, perhaps not. But the
essential is that we should continually remind ourselves of what
is right and therefore of what our own decision ought to be. For
there is one fact we should never forget : it is the very foundation
of our spiritual and intellectual life that the individual, whenever
the need arises, should be ready to come forward and to answer
for the rights, the lives and the souls of his fellow human beings.

ANNEDORE LEBER.

xxvi

i YOUTH

GERMAN YOUTH, the men and women who grew up after
the 1914-1918 war, provided much of the enthusiasm and
support which brought Hitler to power. Many of them first
became politically conscious in the days of the Weimar
Republic. This was a period when good intentions and great
efforts at reconstruction, often unappreciated, failed to bring
about economic stability and failed also to give young people
a purpose in life or a loyalty to democratic society. Strong
parties of both Right and Left attacked the foundations of
the state. During the economic crisis of 1929-30 subversive
activities increased alarmingly and inflation was let loose,
working men brought home their wages in suitcases and
university students queued up for the dole with millions of
unemployed. The ground was well prepared for unscrupulous
adventurers; and when the adventurers came, under the
banner of a corrupted nationalism, it was above all the young
who followed them into the darkest period of German history.
These same men and women, and others who grew up
later, also had to bear a very heavy share of the misery meted
out by National Socialism. They had to kill for it and die for
it and at the end even children, boys of 15 or 16, were put
into uniform and sent out to stand between the Fiihrer and
his henchmen and the encircling armies, to delay by a few
weeks or days or hours the inevitable retribution. But the
young had to suffer far more than this : they grew up in an
atmosphere of authority, fear, distortion, propaganda and
hysteria; they were fed with false history and false ideology,
and confused by callous invocation of freedom, patriotism
and social justice; they were taught to despise individuality
and to glory in the corporate bleating of the totalitarian state.
Many of them saw through the facade, some sooner and some
very much later; but whenever it was that disillusionment
came, the whole edifice of habit and loyalty crashed; they
were left with no faith, no background, no purpose, no con-
fidence and very little knowledge of the outside world, other
than a slow realisation that it looked with disfavour on all
that had been done in their name. Those of them who sur-
vived the war had to start again among the ruins, to live

1

down twelve years of Nazi tyranny, and some sought to keep
alive the memory of those of their contemporaries who died
in the struggle against it.

For many of them had resisted and many had been pre-
pared to die. In 1933 there was still an organised opposition,
and the young people in the Labour Movement, in the
greatly reduced ranks of the liberal groups, in the Reichs-
banner (the militant socialist organisation), and in many
denominational and other youth and sports organisations, all
played their part in the genuine, if inadequate, efforts to
ward off disaster. But the Nazis made it clear that they would
not tolerate independent youth movements. Sons followed
their fathers into prison, even young girls were not spared
the brutalities of the SA and the tortures of the Gestapo : the
aim was to line up the young in one state-controlled youth
organisation the Hitler Youth and to use it as an instru-
ment of power. A bitter fight was waged against the few
remaining independent organisations until they were finally
brought to heel. But even the Nazis, though they might
destroy the organisations themselves, could not altogether
obliterate the spirit of opposition among the young, and the
spirit of opposition grew.

As in every sphere, the motives and the manner of resist-
ance varied widely. Some opposed from the beginning, others
began as enthusiastic Nazis. Many were indifferent, and were
more concerned with their next examination or with plans
for their summer holiday than with the demerits of a political
regime which, for the moment, enjoyed obvious success;
and were stung to awareness by some particular event or
personal experience a relation who fell foul of the authori-
ties, a Jewish friend who was in trouble, or a soldier with
long hours of boredom during a bitter winter on the eastern
front in which to think. Many came up against the compul-
sory measures imposed upon them, and took refuge in home
life. Tradition often proved stronger than the Nazis would
have wished, and many parents were able to foster in their
children a basically critical attitude, supported sometimes
by religious faith or by humanitarian feeling. The liberal
ideas of the earlier youth movements were kept alive, and as
time went on and those who deviated from the Nazi pattern
were branded as liberalistic' or 'individualistic', the struggle
against standardisation acquired a new significance.
2

Experiences at the front led many young men to reflect, or
to seek refuge in basic impulses of love, loyalty, comradeship
and mutual trust. Letters from German Students Killed in
Action, 1939-1945 1 gives many examples. The young men no
longer knew what they were fighting for; liberty had become
a legendary concept; some simply believed they must defend
their country, others that the essential task was to be rid of
the National Socialists; but they were not traitors, and cer-
tainly not cowards, merely young and bewildered and
disillusioned, and trying to follow their consciences.

The world took notice when a year before the attempt of
20 July 1944 against Hitler s life the Munich students, the
Scholls and their friends, came out in open defiance of the
Nazis, knowing quite well that they would pay with their
lives and that they had no prospect of tangible success. A
friend wrote of Willy Graf, who was arrested just after the
Scholls and had to wait seven months in the death cell before
his execution : 'At the age of sixteen he first met members
of the Jungenschaft and belonged to this group up to his
death. After the ban on all youth organisations (save those
sponsored by the Nazis), the Jungenschaft continued in being
and rejected all enticements from the National Socialists.
Most of his friends shared his fate, they were killed either in
action or in the struggle against Hitler.*

Hope was never quite abandoned; as late as January 1945
a young member of an illegal group in Berlin still found it
possible to be optimistic, and wrote in a most moving
memorandum : 'Let's make a new start. Really. Let's plough
up the earth once more so that we are ready to sow good new
seed. And it will happen, oh, it will I '

gefattener deutscher Studenten 1989-1945. Rainer
WunderTich Verlag, Tubingen and Stuttgart.

3

ANTON SCHMAUS

19 April 1910 January 1934

ANTON SCHMAUS was one of five children and the second
son of Johannes Schmaus, a trade-union official and a member
of the Reichsbanner in Berlin-Kopenick. He served his
apprenticeship as a carpenter and attended evening classes
at a technical school for builders. He also joined the Socialist
Workers' Youth Organisation and kter the German Socialist
Party, and in 1931 became a member of the Reichsbanner
Youth Organisation. There he was much respected but was
unable, for lack of time, to play any very active part.

The following story was told by Willy Urban and Paul
Hasche, friends and neighbours of the Schmaus family :

In February 1933 the district of Kopenick was thrown into
a state of extreme alarm : SA 1 gangs, in laundry vans, would
pull up at the houses of people known to oppose the Nazis
and cart them off to the various SA headquarters, and no-one
knew if he would return safe and sound from these
ordeals.

'On 21 June the terror reached a climax, when the
Kopenick SA seized more than 200 people during the day.
On his return in the evening Anton Schmaus was warned at
the station that the SA had been to his home looking for his
father and himself. The Schmaus family were widely
respected for their independence of outlook and Anton firmly
refused to take flight, saying he was "fed up with all this law-
lessness" and did not intend to spend his time permanently
in hiding.

'Anton was already upstairs in bed when the SA forced
their way into the house late that evening. They kicked his
mother, who barred their way, and knocked her down. Anton
was woken by her cries for help and found himself at the top
of the stairs confronted by the SA. He told them to get out
of the house, otherwise he would shoot. They took no notice,
and closed in on him; and so as a last resort he pulled out a
pistol. According to the police report of 5 July 1933, File No.
lAdVI, three storm troopers were badly wounded and later

1 Sturmabtettungen Hitler's Brownshirts.
4

died in hospital and a fourth was fatally wounded by a shot
from one of his companions.

'Anton Schmaus jumped out of the window and then gave
himself up to the police. The SA began to search for him and
demanded of the police that he be handed over to them. The
police refused, but for his own safety they sent him to Police

5

Headquarters in Berlin, guarded by two constables. Suddenly
the policemen found themselves surrounded by thirty or
forty storm troopers who clearly intended to seize their
prisoner. According to the same police report, a shot was
fired at him out of the crowd. Anton Schmaus was paralysed
through an injury to the spinal cord, and died in a police
hospital in January 1934. The day of his death is unknown.
'On 22 June 1933, the day after the SA raid, the Brown-
shirts hanged Anton's father, Johannes Schmaus, in his own
house. There were many other fearful acts of revenge. A few
days later a number of sacks containing corpses were washed
up by the river Dahme, near the Grunau ferry. Among those
which were identified were Johannes Stelling, a former Prime
Minister of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Paul von Essen, the
leader of the Reichsbanner and Pokern, a prominent com-
munist/

HELMUTH HUBENER

8 J 127142 Secret!

2 H 141/42

In the Name of
The German People

In the criminal proceedings against :

1. Helmuth Giinther Hiibener, born 8 January 1925, in
Hamburg, civil servant in the Hamburg Welfare Depart-
ment, lately resident in Hamburg.

2. Rudolf Gustav Wobbe, born 11 February 1926, in
Hamburg, locksmith's apprentice, lately resident in Ham-
burg.

3. Karl Heinz Schnibbe, born 5 January 1924, in Ham-
burg, house-painter, lately resident in Hamburg.

4. Gerhard Heinrich Jacob Jonni Diiwer, born 1 Novem-
ber 1924, in Altona, civil servant in the Hamburg Welfare
Department, lately resident at Hamburg-Altona, all at
present held in custody

for plotting high treason

the Second Chamber of the People's Court, in its proceedings
on 11 August 1942, in which there took part :
Presiding Judge: Judge Engert, Vice-President of the

People's Court;
Judge Fikeis;
Brigadefiihrer Heinsius, of the National Socialist Motor

Corps;

Herr Bodinus, Magistrate;

Herr Hartmann, Chairman of the District Court, as repre-
sentative of the Chief Prosecutor of the Reich;
Dr Drullmann, State Prosecutor, as an official of the court;
Herr Wohlke, Clerk of the Court;
has decreed and passed sentence as follows :

7

Hiihcner. for listening to foreign broadcasts and for
spreading the news so heard: and simultaneously for
plotting high treason and treacherously supporting the
enemy, is sentenced to Death and to the loss of civil rights
for the rest of his life;

Wobbe, for listening to foreign broadcasts and for
spreading news so heard, and simultaneously for plotting
high treason is sentenced to 10 years imprisonment;

Schnibbe, for listening to foreign broadcasts and for
spreading news so heard, is sentenced to 5 years' imprison-
ment;

and Diiwer, for spreading news from foreign broadcasts
is sentenced to 4 years 9 imprisonment.

EXTRACTS FROM THE COURT CASE BOOK

The defendant Hiibener is now 17 years of age. His father
is at present employed in the Security Service, his mother is at
home.

*He attended an elementary school and moved on to a
secondary school in 1938. His school leaving report was excel-
lent. In April 1941 he joined the civil service, executive grade.
In 1938 he joined the junior section of the Hitler Youth
Organisation, and later became a member of the Hitler Youth
proper and was a member until the time of his arrest. Since
early childhood he has been a member of the "Church of Jesus
Christ of the Latter-Day Saints".

4 Since the summer of 1941, Hiibener has spread the contents
of British news bulletins in leaflets and handbills. . . . All in all
twenty different propaganda leaflets of this kind, either drafts
or mimeographed copies, have been confiscated. In addition
to the British bulletins on the war situation, the handbills con-
tained insults and insinuations against the Ftihrer and his
lieutenants and inflammatory attacks on the measures and
institutions of the National Socialist government; they also
demanded that the war be ended by the overthrow of the
Fuhrer. . . .

'All the defendants have admitted that they were aware of
the ban on listening to foreign stations and on the spreading of
foreign news detrimental to the Reich. They have also made
the following statements :

'Hubener: Unlike the German news bulletins, British bulletins
to which he had listened had reported events in a manner
8

favourable to England and detrimental to the Reich. But since
they went into far more detail than the German reports, he
believed that on most points they were true; and had con-
sidered it his duty to let other people know about them, so that
they would also hear the truth and be better informed. . . .

'Hiibener, whom the witness Mons has called an excellent
and reliable colleague, has shown in his work at the Central
Administration an intelligence far exceeding that of the average

boy of his age ... an impression that is borne out by the fact
that he reached an educational standard beyond that of the
Elementary School. Moreover, in his final school examination,
he submitted a political essay entitled War of the Plutocrats.
Although this was in the main a compilation, it was hard to
believe that the author was only 15 or 16 years old; both in
content and maturity of style this essay appears to be the work
of someone far older. The same applies to the leaflets which
Hiibener drafted on the basis of the news broadcasts; no one
could imagine that their author was only 16 or 17, even if he
knew that they were composed with the help of notes. Thus
the defendant had to be punished as an adult person.
The death sentence was carried out on 27 October, 1942.'

10

HILDA MONTE

31 July 191418 April 1945

WHEN HILDA MONTE was 15 years old, she was writing
for Der Funke (The Spark), the Berlin organ of the Socialist

Ptioto by Atelier Bemei
11

International. Three years later, when the Nazis seized
power in Germany, she was in England. Although as a Jewess
she had reason enough to worry about her own future, she
devoted all her strength and her short life to the organisation
of an international resistance movement against the Nazi
regime and to the liberation of the German people. Through
the Socialist International she got in touch with political
friends in many countries and also, with great skill, in
Germany. In speeches and in writing she advocated the
decisive blow against Nazism the removal of Hitler. Under
the pseudonym of Hilda Monte (her real name was Hilde
Meisel), she kept her friends in Germany well informed,
warning them when danger threatened and helping them to
escape.

During the war she published in English a short story
entitled Where Freedom Perished, in which she tried to make
it clear to other nations that Germans, too, were being
oppressed by Nazi dictatorship; and about the same time she
published a book, The Unity of Europe, which reveals her
understanding of political and economic affairs.

Even during the war she tried to reach Germany; in 1939
she got as far as Lisbon, but had to return to England. In
1944 she managed to make her way to Switzerland, hoping
to go on to Austria and Germany. In the spring of 1945 she
was shot dead by an SS patrol when attempting to cross the
frontier, illegally, on her return to Switzerland.

Nora Platiel, one of her closest friends, has written of her :

'Hilda Monte, physically delicate, mentally lively and pre-
cocious, turned to political journalism at an age when other
young people are still working for their examinations. Her clear
mind quickly grasped the salient features of our social struc-
ture. Though she never completed her formal education, her
many theses on social economy and political affairs testify to
her ability.

'She has left behind her a number of poems. They have no
great literary merit, and yet are strangely moving. Is it her deep
community with nature, with the arts, with the world of beauty
which appeals to us so directly? Or is it the deep sincerity, the
passion for justice? Perhaps we come closest to Hilda Monte's
character and to the meaning and value of her poems when we
take them as expressions of a passionate and restless heart,
which never yielded to cowardice or inertia/
12

Do Not Speak ot Courage

Do not speak of courage,

do not speak of heroes,
Heroism too;

1 know there are some heroes
To whom all praise is due

But my case was quite different :

To praise me is absurd.

Life is sometimes so oppressive,

So unbearably hard,

One must be brave to live at all;

Far braver, than to hear the call

Of some great cause, to give

One's life, and be done with it all.

So, one learns that death may be

Despised : it's good to learn that truth.

But they who get as far as this

Can best give proof

Of courage, by retreat : by living on

For years and decades long

Vistas of living. Do not make a hero

Of her for whom life was too strong.

(From Poems by Hans Lehnert, Hilde Meisel. Europaische
Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg.)

13

JONATHAN STARK

8 July 1926 October 1944

His parents were Jehovah's Witnesses and gave Jonathan
a strict religious upbringing. On leaving the elementary
school he learned lithography at an art school in Ulm, where
he was regarded as one of the best pupils. On 1 October
1943, when he was 17, he was ordered to report to the
National Socialist Labour Service, which he did with a heavy
heart because he knew that even boys of 16 were being
taught to use arms. True to his faith, he refused to swear the
Oath of Allegiance to Hitler, and after three days at a labour
camp he was arrested by the Gestapo.

Soon after this his father was likewise arrested, remaining
in prison until after the end of the war. Jonathan Stark him-
self was taken to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen,
and there, at the end of October 1944, was hanged.

Herman Scheffel, who was in the same concentration camp
and who, as a Jehovah's Witness, was later sentenced to a
long term of penal servitude in the Soviet-occupied zone,
told the following story :

'In the autumn of 1944 I heard that the young brother
Jonathan Stark had arrived at the camp. He was put in the
punishment cells in Block 14 and immediately given a special
uniform. We all knew what these uniforms meant : they were
death uniforms. When I heard this I tried to get in touch with
him, which was of course strictly forbidden. But I succeeded,
and talked to him for over an hour. His companions were
impressed by his exceptional behaviour, and he was much
beloved. He was quite calm on that first evening that I was
with him, though he had no illusions about his fate. He
remained serene and in control of himself to the end, so much
so that his behaviour won the admiration even of the SS. He
was the sensation of the camp and everybody talked about him.

'One Tuesday afternoon Iris last hour was at hand. We saw
him once more, from a distance, but were unable to get near
him. He was standing by the gate, upright and quiet A pro-
fessional criminal had been ordered to hang him in the presence
of the camp commandant. His neck was put in the noose. The
hangman hesitated and the commandant forgot to give the
14

order. Suddenly the boy asked : "Why do you hesitate? Bear
witness for Jehovah and for Gideon!" These were his last
words/

At the time, Jonathan Stark was one of 6,034 Jehovah's
Witnesses in Germany. Of these, 5,911 were arrested
between 1933 and 1945. Over 2,000 of them were either
executed, or died of ill-treatment, hunger, disease or over-
strain in the course of forced labour.

15

SOPHIE SCHOLL

9 Mav 192122 February 1943

* *

SOPHIE SCROLL was born in the small town of Forchtenberg
(Wurttemberg). She was the daughter of the local mayor,
and grew up with four brothers and sisters. In 1940 she left
the secondary school at Ulm and spent two years training as
a kindergarten teacher. She was then called up by the
Labour Service and later by the Auxiliary Military Service.
In May 1942 she began to study biology and philosophy at
Munich University. She belonged to the resistance group
known as the '\Vhite Rose', composed of students, artists and
scientists who called for a clear rejection of Hitler and his
regime in order as one of their leaflets put it 'to strive for
the renewal of the mortally wounded German spirit'.

On 18 February 1943, Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans
were arrested at the university; they were sentenced to death
by the People's Court, with Freisler as the presiding judge,

16

on 22 February 1943, together with Christoph Probst, a
friend of Hans. The sentences were carried out a few hours
later. The nucleus of the group consisted of Professor Kurt
Huber, Willi Graf and Alexander Schmorell. They too were
executed.

'My heart soon gets lost in petty anxieties and forgets that
death is near. It is quite unprepared, quickly distracted by
frivolous incidentals, it could easily be taken by surprise when

17

the hour comes and miss the one great joy for the sake of little
pleasures.

1 realise this but not so my heart. It continues to dream,
refuses to listen to reason, is lulled into safety by the consoling
words of irritating warders and fluctuates between joy and
sorrow. Sorrow is all that is left, paralysis, utter helplessness,
and a faint hope.

*My heart clings to these treasures, to the promise of a sweet
life; tear me away against my will, because I am too weak to
do it myself. Let me wait till I am miserable and in pain before
I dream away salvation.

SOPHIE/
* * *

From Sophie ScholTs letters and entries in her diary :

9 November 1939.

'. . . After all, one should have the courage to believe in what
is good. I do not mean that one should believe in illusions, but
I mean that one should do only what is true and good and
take it for granted that other people will do the same, in a way
one can never do with the intellect alone. (That is to say never
calculate)/

16 May 1940.

'. . . I hope very much that you will survive this war and this
era without becoming its slave. We each have our own stan-
dards of values, but we don't use them enough. Perhaps because
they are the most exacting standards/

13 January 1941.

'. . . In the train I longed so much to see a face which would
remind me of my brothers and sisters and friends. Does that
make sense? Not exactly home-sickness, but awareness of being
different. Even the young people, and there were lots in the
train, weren't young any more, they seemed to think the only
purpose of youth is pleasure. But my family and friends even
if they were sometimes clumsy or ignorant, were at least full of
goodwill full of the will to do what is good/

July 1942.

*I want to shout for joy at being so alone, with the wild rough
wind pouring all over me. I'd like to stand all by myself on a
raft, upright above the grey river which rushes along so fast
that the wind cannot touch it. I'd like to shout out that I am
so gloriously alone.
18

The wind tears open the blue sky, out comes the sun and
kisses me tenderly. I'd like to kiss him back, but my wish is
forgotten in a moment as the wind grasps me. I feel the won-
derful firmness of my body, I laugh aloud for the sheer joy of
finding I can resist the wind. I can feel all my own strength/

10 February 1943.

1 shall probably be called up for labour service next summer.
I am not entirely unhappy about it, because I still want to
suffer, to share the suffering of these days (that is putting it too
strongly; I mean that I want to be affected more directly). You
will understand, sympathy is often difficult and soon becomes
hollow if one feels no pain oneself.'

19

HEINZ BHLLO

3 September 192029 June 1944

'How helpless we human beings are in the face of death.
What would life be without faith? We should have to despair
if we expected merely to revert to dust and ashes'.

Heinz Bello, a 24-year-old Sergeant in the Medical Corps,
said those words just before his execution by a firing squad
and his family were told of them by an army chaplain, Herr
Kreuzberg. This chaplain, who accompanied many young
soldiers to execution, gives the following account of the
events of that day :

'It was 6 a.m. when Heinz Bello was told at the office of the
Military Remand Prison in Berlin that his petition for mercy
had been rejected and that the death sentence "would be
carried out at 8 o'clock this morning by a firing squad". Heinz
accepted the sentence gravely and calmly. I then went back
with him to his cell. When we had sat down he said something
like this : "I suppose it is God's will. Yesterday I was transferred
to this place from Spandau. Last night I didn't sleep as well as
usual. The thought struck me that if I should have to die today
it would be on the day commemorating the death of the martyrs
Peter and Paul. I will die for a Christian Germany. I want to
die for the re-unification of the Churches in Germany so that all
people can live in peace again. My last words shall be : Omnia
ad majorem Dei gloriam! All for the greater glory of God. . . ."

In a closed car, I drove with him and the Protestant chap-
lain and another young soldier to the place of execution. We
arrived at 7.55 a.m. The other soldier went first with the
chaplain. When the volley was fired, Heinz said : "Lord, give
him eternal peace ! " We prayed. Then our time was up. I went
with him all the way. The sentence was read over again. He
was asked whether he had any final wish, and said he wanted
to die as a free man, without a bandage over his eyes and
without handcuffs. His wish was granted. He stood upright,
ready for the end. I gave him the blessing once more, and shook
hands with him. Then he prayed, his lips moving gently, his
eyes lifted to heaven/

Heinz Bello was born in Breslau on 5 September, 1920, and
was the son of a tax collector. He passed his matriculation in
20

Wesel in March 1939, then completed his compulsory period
with the Labour Service. After the outbreak of war he was
called up for the Armed Forces. He was later exempted from
military service to study medicine, and began his studies in
January 1940 at Munster University, but in October he was
called up again. He took part in the advance on Moscow, as
a corporal, and was awarded the Iron Cross (2nd Class) and

21

the East Medal. He was later transferred from the front to a
students' company at home which enabled him to resume his
medical studies. For his courageous rescue work after an air
raid on Minister on 10 October 1943, when he received a
head injury from a bomb splinter, he was awarded the Badge
for Wounded Soldiers.

On 18 March 1944, Heinz Bello stood before the Central
Military Court in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Two so-called
friends had informed on him. On 20 July, 1943, the day
before he was due to take his preliminary medical examina-
tion, he had been detailed for fire-watching at the barracks
where the students' company was housed. Annoyed by this
inconsiderate order, he gave vent to his feelings with some
hard words against militarism, National Socialism and party
informers. He also pointed to a cross which happened to have
been left in the building now serving as barracks and said :
'So long as there is a God in Heaven, there is a limit to what
can happen on earth/

From the time when proceedings against him began, up to
the time of his trial, Heinz Bello was not actually under lock
and key. During this interval he turned down offers from
friends to help him to go to Switzerland, because he did not
want his family to suffer the consequences; and on the date
set for the trial, he and his father went to Berlin. The hearing
began at 1 p.m. but was very soon interrupted by an air-raid
warning. During the alert, which lasted two hours, his
solicitor made it quite clear to him that, judging by proceed-
ings so far, things looked extremely serious, and urged him
to seize his chance and escape from the unguarded air-raid
shelter. He again refused to take advantage of such a situa-
tion.

At 4 p.m. the trial was resumed and in less than an hour
the court pronounced sentence as follows : Tor undermining
morale, Heinz Bello, a Sergeant of the Reserve and Officer-
Cadet (civilian occupation : medical student) is sentenced to
death, to dishonour and to loss of civil rights for life/

After the sentence had been pronounced, Heinz Bello was
taken to the military prison in the Lehrter Strasse. It was
impossible to appeal, so the defence took the only course
open to them and, on 19 April 1944, filed a petition for mercy
with the court at the Wehrmacht Headquarters in Berlin-
Charlottenburg. But on 10 June 1944, on the strength of
22

opinions submitted by the leader of the students' movement
and by the Fiihrers Chancellory, the sentence was con-
firmed. Heinz Bello was shot on 29 June 1944, on the
machine-gun ranges in Berlin-Tegel.

23

FR1EDRICH KARL KLAUSING

24 May 19208 August 1944

FIUEDRICII KARL KLAUSING, being a member of the
Christian Boy Scouts, was automatically transferred to the
Hitler Youth in 1933. In 1938 he passed his matriculation in
classics, and after serving six months with the Labour Service
joined up with the 9th Infantry Regiment, as an officer-cadet,
in the autumn of 1938. He took part in the Polish and French
campaigns, was awarded the Iron Cross (1st Class) and
received his commission. He was seriously wounded at the
battle of Stalingrad, when he was promoted to 1st Lieutenant;
and when he was again badly wounded in Russia in 1943, he
was transferred to G.H.Q. for home service.

This young officer is a true representative of a whole
generation who grew up under the influence, and indeed in
the spirit of National Socialism; but each of whom, sooner or
later, was brought by his own thinking or experience to the
point where he was forced to listen to the voice of conscience,
and to find his own answer. For Klausing, the conflict began
at the front, when he began to ask himself what sense there
was in the war; it deepened when he was sent on home
service, after being wounded. Then he met a friend from his
regiment, an older man, Fritz von der Schulenburg, who
opened his eyes and won him over to the cause of the resist-
ance group. Klausing then cast aside the tarnished ideals of
his youth, betrayed as they were by criminal leaders, and
became Adjutant to Stauffenberg, whom he admired with all
the enthusiasm of youth but also as time went on with a more
mature political outlook.

There now began a life of self-denial and conspiracy which
led by way of many setbacks and long waiting to 20 July.
Although ill himself, Klausing was in the War Office in the
Bendlerstrasse at mid-day, ready to cany out his appointed
task, which was to keep other key members of the plot, in
Potsdam, in touch with events. He witnessed the arrest and
execution by a firing squad of the officers nearest to Stauffen-
berg, but himself escaped late at night. He took refuge in the
ZeMendorf house of Vera Gaupp, a doctor, as he had often
24

Photograph taken in ike People* t Cour*

done in the past weeks. He spent the next few hours with
Wolfgang Gaupp, one of the conspirators, trying to decide
what was the right thing to do. Finally he chose neither
suicide nor flight, but gave himself up to the authorities the
next morning. He was sentenced to death by the People's
Court, and died with some of his friends on 8 August, 1944.
Vera Gaupp has written the following account, based on
her brother's story of Klausing during the last few hours
before his arrest.

'He came to my house at midnight, white and distraught.

25

My brother was there too. Klausing laid his pistol on the table.
He said that he would now have to shoot himself, since all was
lost and he must share the fate of his friends. The discussion
lasted half the night, and ranged over the alternatives of flight,
suicide or a common death with his friends. He soon gave up
the idea of suicide, because he didn't want to endanger the
rest of us; also, on reflection, he decided it would be no real
solution, but merely an evasion. Flight he regarded as cowardly,
and thought this too might lead to trouble for those who would
wish to help him. And so in the end there seemed to be only
one thing to do : openly to declare himself for Stauffenberg and
his venture, and return to the Bendlerstrasse. Wolfgang was
unable to convince him of the senselessness of this sacrifice,
which could no longer serve the cause. The deciding factor
in Klausing*s decision was his loyalty to his friends, for which
his life seemed to him to be the appropriate price. When he
set off at eight o'clock the next morning to give himself up
he was calm, sure and fearless. He knew what he was doing.'

26

MICHAEL KITZELMANN

29 January 191612 June 1942

MICHAEL KITZELMAXX was the son of a fanner in the
Allgiiu; he went to the elementary school and to a boys' school
in Dillingen. He served his term with the Labour Service,
and then studied for three terms at St. Stephan's Theological
School, in Augsburg; after that he joined the 20th Infantry
Regiment in Lindau to complete his compulsory military
service. He had no love of soldiering and as early as 9 January
1938, he wrote to a friend: 'So for two years I must submit
to this horrible yoke of ridiculous and dreary military drill,
which I find quite soul-destroying after only a few weeks/
Before his two years were up, the war began. Michael took
part in the Polish campaign as a private soldier and wrote to
a friend who lived near him at home : 'Never will I tell any-
body what I have seen and experienced here/ He later went
on a course for non-commissioned officers in Doberitz, got
his commission during the French campaign in 1940, and
was awarded the Iron Cross (2nd Class).

During the Russian campaign, Michael Kitzelmann was a
company commander in the 199th Infantry Regiment. On
3 April 1942, he was sentenced to death by a Court Martial
for what was called 'undermining the German Army*. The
sentence was carried out by a firing squad in Orel on il June
1942. Details of the Court Martial proceedings are not
known. But there was no concealing Michael Kitzelmann's
bitter criticism of the government, which found expression
in, for instance, such remarks as : If these criminals should
win, then I would have no wish to live any longer/

The following are extracts from the diary which he wrote
while he was in prison :

'On 11 April 1942, I walked into the military prison of the
fortress of Orel. The fortress, a huge squat building, distem-
pered pink, with massive round turrets at each corner, lies to
the north of the town on the steep banks of the river Oka.
There is a dark stone passage on the upper floor where the air
is dank and chill; and here I was handed over to the prison
guards.

'My cell is in the north-east turret and is about 14 feet wide

27

and die same height. It has a wooden floor and a vaulted brick
ceiling. To the west an arched window pierces the wall, which
is over three feet thick, and across die window there are strong
iron bars, let into the wall. In the evening and then only, a few
golden sunrays briefly penetrate to my dreary solitude. A
massive oak door, reinforced by heavy iron-work, shuts out the
world/

'Darkness and terror paralyse my being. The stillness is
unbearable. Helpless and abandoned I am left to myself, alone,
sentenced to death. . .!

'Now I know the full fury of these Military Laws. Overnight
I was branded as a criminal just for making a few derogatory
remarks about the government. And for that apparently I must
lose my life, my honour, my friends and my place in human
society. How could all this happen? I had a good enough
reputation up to now, and so far as I know I was regarded as a
decent man with a normal sense of duty. What are right and
justice in this world? Haven't I served my country honourably
for four years? I was at the front for two years, took part in
three campaigns and proved my loyalty often enough. Is this
the thanks I get from my country?

'Apart from all that I am beginning to be afraid for my
family at home. Letters have been taken from my trunk, and
others from the post, and confiscated by the Court, letters from
my father and mother and from friends. What will happen to
them? Will the law get on to them too? That would be terrible.
But I suppose there is nothing to be done and . . . events must
take their course. I am so much afraid: my fears follow me
day and night like horrifying ghosts, and all the time this awful
loneliness, this claustrophobia, this oppressive silence. For
hours on end I pace up and down my cell, just to hear my own
footsteps. I light a fire in the stove just to hear it's crackling. I
pray aloud to hear my own voice; and I call upon Heaven,
asking God to help me in my agony. . . ."

'Home-sickness grips my heart, and that is the worst of all
my troubles. My beloved, beautiful home seems so far away. I
suppose I shall never see it again : my parents* house with its
garden in front, the fruit trees, the green meadows and the
rustling woods, the waterfall, the quiet little church in the
Argental valley, the hills on the other side. A paradise in this
world of woe

'But what fearful suffering has my clumsiness brought on
my beloved mother and father, on my brothers and sisters, my
relations and friends? To have to hurt love itself: it is then,
surely, that the human heart suffers its greatest pain.
28

Photo by Atelier Sauler

'Who would blame me for these earthly ties, this agony, this
burning home-sickness? Was not Christ Himself, the Son of
God, overcome on the Mount of Olives at the prospect of His
sacrifice for mankind? Even He suffered when saying farewell
to those He loved. He let them wait at the gate leading into
the garden, He asked His friends to pray for Him, three times
He interrupted His prayers to go back to them, for He did not

29

want to be alone. He longed for the sympathy of His friends.

'I pray to Jesus the Crucified, who has led the way through
the most bitter pain. And He answers me : "If you will be My
disciple, take up your cross and follow me!"

'But I appeal to Him : "Lord, I am still so young, too young
for such a heavy cross; I have not lived my life, aU my hopes,
plans and aims are unfulfilled." And he says : "Behold, I too
was young, I had yet to live my life, and as a young man I
carried the cross and sacrificed my young life."

'Again my soul complains : "Behold my bitter home-sickness,
the sufferings of my family. Let me return to life and let me
not hurt their love."

'But Jesus replies : "If you cannot leave your belongings and
all your earthly love, you cannot be my disciple. Follow me!"

'Again my soul rebels : "O Lord, the burden is too heavy;
relieve me of this terrible yoke; shorten my sufferings and dry
my tears!"

'Lovingly He speaks : "My son, be brave and do not despair!
I have suffered so greatly for humanity, and for you too; I have
opened Heaven for you. And I shall remain with you until the
end."

1 answer my Saviour : "Thank you a thousand times for your
endless love, my Redeemer! I shall be your disciple and I will
carry your cross after you. So take me by the hand and lead me
to my blessed end in all eternity."

The morning is the worst. Every time I wake up, I am
almost crushed by the horror of my fate. Fear of death fills my
heart; how many more times shall I be able to He down in my
cell and rest? Shall I still be alive tomorrow? I feel like a
drowning man. Desperately I look for some support. I cling to
the Cross of the Saviour and implore Him to give me comfort
and strength. I start my prayers in the morning and go on
praying until my heart is calm again/

'24 May, Whitsunday. Whitsuntide in prison and in the
shadow of death! The storms in my soul are calmer. The
Whitsuntide sun, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and Saviour,
lightens even my desperate solitude. And while I rejoice in the
return of the Holy Ghost, in my solitary cell, I am reminded of
the splendour of my own countryside at this time of the year.
It is as if I were standing at home with the choir in the church,
and I sing once more the old, immortal hymn Veni Creator
Spiritus. I know that I am near to God. Human misery retreats,
even death loses its horror *

*Now I live the life of a hermit. My day's work consists of
praying, reading the Bible, occasionally scribbling something
in my diary or writing letters. It is very painful, this separation
30

from life, from the past, from all fond hopes and plans and
particularly from my nearest and dearest. It is terribly hard to
submit wholly to God's will in such agonising circumstances :
but the only attainable comfort is to hold out to the end despite
all suffering. . . /

'On 11 June 1942, at 5 p.m., I was told that my petition for
mercy had been rejected and that the sentence would be
carried out on 12 June 1942 at S a.m. Lord, Thy will be done.
In the evening I knew great joy. Dear, good Pastor Schmitter
has come back and wants to stay with me during my last hours
on earth. He was here till after midnight. I told him my final
wishes, asked him to give my love to my people at home and
talked over with him what would happen at the end. He has
promised to return punctually at 6 a.m. Then I will confess
once more, for my whole life. We shall celebrate Nfass and take
Communion together. . . .

'God has granted me great joy, for the hour of my death is a
merciful one/

31

2 LEARNING

THE National Socialists were not content with political
mastery. They demanded also that their doctrines and
ideologies should be accepted by each and even- individual
and that the state should order the Weltanschauung the
whole attitude of all the people; to this end they embarked
on a ruthless course of suppression and annihilation.

Many of their methods are well-known : the police state,
the censorship, the control of education and the propaganda
machine. When Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda and a
central Ministry of Education (education was normally the
concern of each Land} were set up, the intention was all too
clear. Among the earliest measures taken by the new govern-
ment were the 'cleansing' of the universities and schools, the
banning of dissident newspapers and periodicals, the suppres-
sion of writers whose opinions did not conform and the
barbaric public burning of books. The inquisition of the mind
reached a climax on 10 May 1933, ten weeks after the Reich-
stag fire and while the atmosphere of political terror still
reigned, when huge bonfires raged in the Gendarmmarkt in
Berlin and in many other public squares. Many famous books
by living authors who had added to Germany's fame as a
literary and scientific nation, and practically all European
literature since Voltaire which might possibly stimulate the
German reader to reflect on the spirit of the new regime,
belonged to the Schmutz-imd-Schiindliteratiir which was
sent up in flames by order of Goebbels.

Hundreds of writers and scientists had to leave the country
of their birth. Many lost their lives. Others were frustrated
by the ban on speech and publication, or driven to other and
unaccustomed occupations; if, that is, they were spared the
concentration camp, or death. Emigration, actual or spiritual,
became the only alternative to subservience. The National
Socialist state had in its hands all the weapons it needed to
enforce compliance.

Anti-Semitism was one of them; it was in fact a corner
stone of Nazi policy. Economic, social and racial prejudices
were systematically fostered, built up into a philosophy of
envy and hate. The amateurish racial theories of Hans F. K.
32

Giinther and Alfred Rosenberg purported to give to the
despotism a pseudo-scientific basis and to provide in the
primitive cult of the 'master race' an intellectual justification
for its policy: the policy whose practical results were the
gas chambers of Auschwitz.

The propaganda for the 'master race* theory was carried
into the smallest villages; the notice The Jews are our mis-
fortune' appeared everywhere in shop windows: Der Stunner
carried endless perverted scandal stories. The Xazis were at
some pains to give a legal veneer to their annihilation cam-
paign, and one inhuman law succeeded another. First came
the dismissal of all Jewish officials, then their exclusion from
all professions; followed by deprivation of citizenship,
imposition of higher taxes, compulsory labour and finally
discrimination in private as well as public life : they were
branded with yellow stars, not allowed to have pets, cars,
telephones or wireless; to buy books or newspapers, nor even
to use automatic ticket machines or public telephones.
On the notorious Kristattnacht, in November 1938, a mob,
organised by the authorities, demolished their shops and
burned down their Synagogues, without opposition from the
police, in even 7 German town.

Those people who retained their independence in face of
such doctrines came up against the full power of the machine,
and found that they too incurred, first, defamation, then
persecution and finally death. But there were scientists,
teachers, journalists and men of learning who stood up to the
Nazi disciples of 'Culture* and 'Race' against the bogus
racial theories, the abuse of medicine to allow euthanasia,
forced sterilisation, experimental murders and finally against
legal mockerj- and the national policy of war. They were
ready to give up their lives in defence of the freedom of the
mind, and by doing so they challenged the arrogant belief of
the tyrants in power that the mind is something that can be
bought, conditioned, degraded and enslaved.

33

CARL von OSSIETZKY

3 October 18893 May 1938

CARL vox OSSIETZKY came from a lower-middle class
Catholic family in Hamburg. He won an international reputa-
tion as a journalist and died on 3 May 1938, as a prisoner of
the Gestapo in Berlin.

He was one of the first victims to be arrested on the morn-
ing after the Reichstag fire, and his martyrdom in concentra-
tion camps lasted for more than three years. But when the
Berlin Propaganda Ministry learned that he was being
seriously considered in Oslo for the award of the Nobel Peace
Prize, the Gestapo were obviously much embarrassed and
ordered that he should be taken to a prison hospital in Berlin.

Four months later, a few days before the final decision of
the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee, Hermann Goring
had the powerless 'deadly enemy' brought into his office, so
that he could talk to him; and there, now with threats and
now with flattery, he tried to extract from Ossietzky a
promise to the effect that, should the Nobel Prize decision
fall in his favour, he would reject it with some sort of personal
declaration as to his unworthiness; if he would do this he
would be allowed to go free and to enjoy material security,
and be left in peace. Ossietzky said 'No', and went back to
his prison.

A week after this discussion, while German newspapers
and broadcasting stations were spreading the provoking
news and describing it as 'an impudent challenge to the
"Third Reich"' the prize-winner had been moved, on
Goring's orders to a municipal hospital, where he lay under
strict arrest and special supervision. In Oslo however, the
President of the Nobel Prize Committee received the follow-
ing telegram: 'Grateful for the unexpected honour Carl
von Ossietzky/ The sender had to pay for it by life-imprison-
ment, but no one had dared hold up his message. This
courageous decision, in spite of all the pressure which was
put upon him was in fact the measure of Ossietzky's
character, for such decisions determined the part he played
in public life in Germany.
34

In his youth, in Hamburg, Ossietzky's fight a journalistic
fight was directed against the influence of the army in the
home and foreign affairs of the Reich. When he was thirty he
came back from the western front, where he had fought as a
private soldier, deeply shaken and embittered by the war
experiences of his generation, and brought back with him the
firm resolve to devote his energy and talents to opposing all
and any forces which might bring about another war; and to
work no less energetically to build and to protect a free,
democratic Republic, ruled by citizens who were glad and
proud of their responsibilities.

Photo from Tagtsspitgel /tits

Carl von Ossietzky in Papenburg-Estencegen concentration
camp, where he received the following information:

THE NOBEL COM^TTEE of the NORWEGIAN STORTHIXG
has in accordance with the provisions laid down by

ALFRED NOBEL

in his Will of November 27 1895 awarded the

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE for 1935 to

CARL VON OSSIETZKY

Oslo, December 10, 1936.

35

To those ends, he first went to Berlin as Secretary of the
German Peace Society, then became editor of liberal news-
papers and periodicals and found, in 1927, as editor of the
Weltbiihne, a platform which satisfied his insistence on com-
plete freedom of speech and which was well suited to an
intellectual guerrilla who lacked only the sharp elbows of the
successful politician.

Ossietzky wrote in a brilliant, versatile, aggressive and
often bitingly witty style. As German politics degenerated
into a latent civil war between the left-wing radicals and the
right-wing and conservative groups, Ossietzky emerged as a
bulwark against the National Socialist threat; and as a critic
of the parties of the right which were friendly disposed
towards Hitler and of the military and legal forces which
were prepared to compromise with Nazism.

Ossietzky brought to light in his periodical the work of
many pro-Soviet writers, but he himself complained that 'the
word "freedom" is given no place in the vocabulary of Red
Russia', and that Moscow wanted to pack the European
affiliations of the Communist Party with their 'weak-willed
satellites and half-witted slaves'; meanwhile the men charged
with the protection of the Republic and of freedom in
Germany were clearly told where they had gone wrong, by
commission or by default as the case might be : so it was not
surprising that he had to meet attacks, as he himself put it,
'from the Right, accusing me of betrayal of national interests,
and from the Left, charging me with irresponsible carping
aestheticism*.

The first great test came with the famous Leipzig trial
before the Reich Court, which took place in secret in 1931.
Ossietzky was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment on a
charge of 'treason and betrayal of military secrets'; the result
of violent attacks in the Weltbiihne in which he had stated
that camouflaged funds, withdrawn from parliamentary
control, had been put at the disposal of certain military
departments, and that they were being used on Soviet terri-
tory, with the co-operation of the Soviet government, for the
secret but intensive production of air armaments for
Germany. Ossietzky could easily have avoided his prison
sentence by going abroad, for the guilt-ridden authorities
would have been in no position to interfere. But he main-
tained that the Weltbiihne could remain true to its reputa-
36

when things became difficult, he chose 'not the convenient
solution, but the necessary one'. Ossietzky remained in
Germany and went to prison.

Seven months later, after he had been released under the
Christmas Amnesty of the Chancellor, von Schleicher, he
again refused, in February 19-33, to choose a 'convenient'
solution. After Hitler had become Chancellor, his friends
implored him to save himself in time by going abroad. 'After
my final election article/ he replied. He did not want to leave
until he had made this last attempt to avert evil. On the same
night that Ossietzky's last warning cry was printed, the
Reichstag was set on fire, and at 5 o'clock in the morning they
came to fetch him.

In the concentration camp, whenever Ossietzky bled from
the blows of his tormentors or collapsed with a heart attack
during hard labour, they would allow him a few days rest on
his wooden bunk, and then a high Nazi official would appear
and suggest that he should sign a release petition saying that
he had 'revised* his opinions. To this compromise with
dictatorship Ossietzky said *Xo', and for his *XV he was
silenced by slow, murderous 'special treatment' until, ill
beyond hope, his life quietly slipped away in the darkness of
isolation.

37

FRITZ SOLMITZ

22 October 189319 September 1933

FRITZ SOLMITZ was bom in Berlin, the only son of well-to-
do parents. He studied national economy at Freiburg
University for one term and in August 1914 volunteered for
military service, but owing to an accident his call-up was
postponed until 1915.

Fritz Solmitz's experience of war on the western front
made him a pacifist. On his return in November 1918 he took
part briefly in the fight against the Sparticists in Berlin, but
was soon demobilised, took his degree in political economy
and became an official in the public welfare service in Berlin.
In 1924 he entered the field of political journalism, and for
the last nine years of his life he was political editor on the
staff of the Lubecker Volksbote, where he worked closely
with Julius Leber. Until 1933 he was also a member of the
Liibeck City Council.

He seems to have made up his mind quite early to devote
his life to the cause of justice; and the two main driving
forces which combined to shape his personality were his
Jewish faith and his insight into the injustice of the social and
economic conditions of his time. Tor me, politics have never
been anything but a means to justice/ he wrote in a passage
taken from his posthumously published work. He lived up to
his beliefs, and was unassuming so far as he was himself con-
cerned but always ready to help anyone who was in need.
He served the cause through his allegiance to the Social
Democratic Party, and in the work he did for associations
with social, educational and pacifist aims. He followed his
course passionately and, with an uncompromising love of
truth, he wrote while in prison in Liibeck: 1 believe that
absolute honesty with oneself is the most important
axiom of religion. Lies are the beginning of all that is
ungodly/'

His mind and his words were clear-cut, and so was their
warning. His insight and his almost prophetic anticipation
of the political developments in Germany enabled him to
foresee the consequences of Nazi tyranny in their true horror,
38

and as time went on he made it clear, in many grave and
profound discussions, that he was quite aware of the
insecurity of his own life. In all his political and journalistic
activities and in particular in his work with the young, he
tried above all to arouse people to their responsibilities as
citizens of a democratic republic. On 24 May 1925, he wrote
on the occasion of a meeting of the Eeidisbanner : 'But we
want to create a fatherland which is a real home to each of

39

us. \Ve want a Germany that we can love freely and without
shame, love not only the country and the people but also the
state, which is the synthesis of the two. But we can love only
a state which builds its greatness not on blood and iron, but
on prosperity and shining armour, a state which is based on
work and justice, a state which we, as free working men and
women, can fashion according to the image we each have in
our own minds/

On 19 February 1933, three weeks after Hitler's assump-
tion of power, Liibeck witnessed a mass parade of workers
and liberals such as it had not seen since 1918. Speaking at
the demonstration, Fritz Solmitz said: 'Are you merely a
motley crowd which will fall apart as soon as the first shot is
fired? I am convinced of the opposite. Threats and terrorism
will only unite us more closely/ And the next day he wrote
in the Volksbote : 'We will not gain our end without sacri-
fices. The soldiers of the Republic know why these sacrifices
must be made/

On 11 March 1933, Fritz Solmitz was arrested in Liibeck.
Friends had advised him to take flight, but he wanted to
share the hardships of the Liibeck workers. For a short time
he was kept in custody at the Burgtor prison, and then in
May 1933 he was sent to Fuhlsbiittel concentration camp
near Hamburg. At the beginning of September Karoline
Solmitz succeeded in persuading the National Socialist Senate
in Liibeck to order her husband's release; but the release
never in fact came about.

On 13 September, after the Chief of the Liibeck Gestapo
had just visited Fuhlsbiittel camp, Solmitz was placed in
solitary confinement and so brutally treated that death came
as a relief during the night of 18-19 September. Dying, and
in great agony, he wrote a few words of farewell to his wife,
on cigarette paper which she found later in his watch case.
They ended with the last verse of Hebbel's poem : "Dem
Schmerz sein Recht'.

Many people went the same way as Fritz Solmitz, silently,
with dignity, and simply because it was not in them to be
different, and others made heroic protest. But all these had
one thing in common which distinguished them from the
rest : they had recognised evil and could not, and would not,
take it upon themselves to live together with it.

While he was in prison Fritz Solmitz seems to have been
40

much aware of the limits imposed on individual destiny, and
its relation to the future; he wrote to his children :

1 feel all too clearly that anything I have been able to give
has been crude and poor, but I have always believed that it
is best in these disordered days to live out one's life in the
service of God and otherwise to keep quiet. For it is not my job
to tell what is going on in the minds of the multitude, and
today I am speaking only to you. and quite softly: may God
grant you true innocence and true kindness, that gladden the
heart/*

41

KURT HUBER

24 October 189.313 July 1943

KURT HUBER was born at Chur, in Switzerland, where his
father taught at the Canton school. In 1897 the family moved
to Wiirttemberg and Kurt passed his matriculation in
Stuttgart. He studied the theory of music and philosophy
in Munich, took his degree in 1917, and in 1920 was formally
admitted to the Faculty of Philosophy and Psychology; he
became a regular lecturer in 1925 and an Extraordinary
Professor in 1926. In 1937, at the request of the Prussian
Ministry for Religion, Education and Culture, he established
the folk-song department of the archives for German music
research, but he soon came into conflict with the leaders of
the students' and Hitler Youth organisations, and as a result
went back to his old post in Munich. Huber was an intellec-
tual, he was deeply religious and he was a man of complete
integrity, whose refusal ever to compromise inevitably
brought him up against his superiors in the state hierarchy,
and set him at loggerheads with the measures of state com-
pulsion. No less inevitable were his ties with student resist-
ance groups, and he was particularly close to the group
round the Scholl family. At the turn of the year 1942-43 there
was endless discussion in these circles, on means of resisting
the growing terror, on the futility of prolonging the war and
on the way to a spiritual and moral regeneration of Germany.
On 8 and 9 February 1943, Kurt Huber himself drafted
the leaflet which the Scholls, ten days later, scattered in the
Munich university courtyard.

'. . . In the name of German youth we demand of Adolf
Hitler that he return to us the personal freedom which is the
most valuable possession of every German, and of which he
has cheated us in the basest possible manner. We have grown
up in a State where freedom of speech is brutally muzzled.
During the most formative years of our lives, the Hitler Youth,
the SS and the SA have tried to standardise us, to coerce us
and to drug us. "Indoctrination" is the despicable method by
which all independent thinking and values have been choked
with platitudes. . . . We are concerned for true knowledge
42

and for genuine freedom of the spirit. No threat can intimidate
us, not even the closing of our universities. . . . The name of
Germany will be sullied for ever unless German youth now at
last rises to crush its tormentors and to restore the spirit of
Europe. Each and all of us must fight for the future, for liberty
and for our own honour in another kind of state, one which is
confident and united. . . /

43

On 27 February 1943, the Gestapo carried off Kurt Huber
from his flat. On 19 April he was sentenced to death together
with Willi Graf and Alexander Schmorell, two of his students.
On 13 July he was beheaded. These are some of the notes he
made for his final pleading before the Court :

'As a German citizen, as a German university teacher, and
as a man who is politically alive, I regard it not only as my
right but also as my moral duty to help to decide the fate of
Germany, to expose obvious defects and to combat them. . . .
I have set out to arouse the students, not by the establishment
of some sort of organisation, but by simple words; not by
any act of terrorism, but by helping them to gain an insight into
the serious deficiencies of our political life. A return to clear
moral principles, to the constitutional state and to mutual trust
of man to man all that, far from being illegal, is simply the
restoration of law. Following Kant's Categorical Imperative, I
have asked myself what would happen if this, my individual
maxim, were to become general law. There can be but one
answer; in that case order, security and trust would return to
our country and to our political life. Every morally responsible
person would raise his voice with us against the menacing
ascendancy of might over right, of dictatorship over the will of
the morally good. The demand for self-determination, even on
a purely local level, has been stifled all over Europe, no less
than the demand that traditional and racial customs be pro-
tected. The pre-requisite of a true national life has been
destroyed by the systematic undermining of trust between
man and man. There can be no more deadly condemnation of
a national community than the confession we all have to make;
that no-one can trust his neighbour, that a father no longer
feels sure of his sons.

"There is a point at which the law becomes immoral and
unethical; that point is reached when it becomes a cloak for
the cowardice that dares not stand up against blatant violations
of justice. A state which suppresses all free speech and which,
by imposing the most terrible punishment, treats each and every
attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every
suggestion for improvement as "plotting high treason", is break-
ing an unwritten law. . . .

1 beg and entreat you on this occasion to judge these young
defendants opposite in a truly constructive manner, to seek and
to hear not lip-service to power, but the clear voice of con-
science; and so to consider the motives which prompted the
deed. These motives were in fact the most selfless and the most
44

idealistic that one can imagine. They were striving for absolute
justice, integrity and truthfulness in public life.

Tor myself, I claim that my warning to reflect on the lasting
principles essential to the existence of a constitutional state is
the supreme need of our time; and that to ignore it would mean
the destruction of the German spirit and eventually of the
German nation. I have achieved one object, in that I have made
this statement and given this warning before the highest court
in Germany and not before some insignificant private debating
club. I stake my life in its support and in support of this my most
solemn entreaty to turn back. , . .

'History will vindicate what I now say and do; of that I am
quite sure. Before God I hope that the spiritual strength which
is the justification for my own actions may also and before it is
too late take hold of my compatriots. I have done what I had
to do, what my own conscience required. I take the con-
sequences upon myself. . . /

45

ELISABETH von THADDEN

29 July 18908 September 1944

THE following account was found among the papers which
Ricarda Huch left behind at her death :

1 met Elisabeth von Thadden at the home of a mutual
friend in Heidelberg. I had been rather dubious about meeting
her, for when I tried to imagine the Pomeranian headmistress
of a Protestant boarding school which recruited its pupils from
army circles, I was left with a picture of some kind of
bespectacled female sergeant major, perhaps not unpleasant,
but rather strange. But I had not been with her for a quarter
of an hour before I took a great liking to her. In her presence
one forgot, for the moment, her origin, standing and profession
and was aware only of her human qualities, although she was
in fact a typical representative of her homeland and of her
calling. She was tall, strong and stately, and the utter confidence
of her bearing reminded one of a matriarch who ran a large
estate and held sway just and kindly over a big family and
an army of servants.

'She was no blue-stocking, neither pedantic nor dogmatic,
and her sense of humour and cheerfulness were most to the
fore. Her friends knew that she was deeply religious and her
Protestant faith was so much a part of her nature that there
was no need for her to emphasise it. I doubt if one would have
got anywhere with her by discussing theology or philosophy.
She probably never went through a period of doubting or had
any difficulty in accepting the conventional dogma. Faith was
for her a matter of course, like her love of her country and her
own people, something with which she lived and died and
which could never be taken away from her. Above all there was
something peculiarly childlike about her, which in contrast to
her portly bearing was particularly attractive. She tackled every
task with the confidence, curiosity and candidness of a child/

Elisabeth von Thadden was born on 29 July 1890, at
Mohrungen, in East Prussia, where her father was chairman
of the local council. In 1905, the family moved to Trieglaff, a
country estate in Pomerania. After her mother's death
Elisabeth, then twenty, took charge of the household and of
her younger brothers and sisters. In 1920 her father married
46

again, and she took up teaching and passed her examination
in youth leadership at the Anna von Gierke training school in
Berlin. After a teaching job at the youth camp of Heuberg,
in the Swabian mountains, and another at the school in
Salem castle, she founded, in the spring of 1927, a Protestant
boarding school at Schloss Wieblingen, near Heidelberg. Her
school flourished, but in the summer of 1941 she was forced
by various new state regulations to resign from the manage-
ment. She then began to work for the Red Cross, where,
according to her sister Ehrengard, she was much distressed

47

to find that some of the letters from prisoners of war in Russia
were destroyed, because Hitler considered they might be
bad for the morale of the troops at the front.

From 1943 onwards Elisabeth von Thadden worked at
various soldiers* recreation centres in France. On 10 Septem-
ber 1943, while she was on leave, she invited a young man to
tea because an old friend in Switzerland had asked her to
introduce him into Christian and conservative circles in
Berlin, saying he had had terrible experiences with the Nazis.

This young man reported to the Gestapo all that was said
at the tea party and as a result the guests who had attended
the party were arrested in the course of the next few months.
On 1 July 1944, the People's Court sentenced Elisabeth von
Thadden to death, together with Otto Kiep, a Minister in the
diplomatic service, on the grounds that die conversation in
question were detrimental to fighting morale, and tanta-
mount to high treason.

During the weeks that followed her sentence, Elisabeth
von Thadden was kept in handcuffs, but she was able to
dictate to Pastor Ohm, the prison chaplain, and thus to com-
municate with her family :

1 was arrested at Meaux, in France, at 8 a.m. on a January
morning in 1944. 1 was brought by car from M. to Paris where
I was interrogated from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and then, after one
hour for supper, the cross-examination continued throughout
the night The next day a warrant of arrest was issued. I had
several opportunities to escape but I did not make use of them
because I did not want to incriminate my brother. I was then
taken to Berlin and again cross-examined all night. The
inquisition was quite terrible. I was asked about the Confes-
sional Church and the Una Sancta. I said nothing that might
incriminate others. Ravensbriick concentration camp was awful.
I have had nothing to do with the 20 July uprising, I know
none of the people involved. We ourselves wanted to help in the
field of social service whenever the need should arise. It was
dear that the time would come. We wanted to be good
Samaritans/

Pastor Ohm, who on 8 September 1944 accompanied
Elisabeth von Thadden to the door of the execution chamber,
said that her steps were sure and her bearing steady. Her last
words were those of a verse from the hymn by Paul
Gerhardt : T?ut an end, O Lord, to all our sufferings/
48

NIKOLAUS GROSS

30 September 189823 January 1945

XIKOLAUS GROSS came from the river Ruhr, the son of
a labourer. After he left the elementary school he went into
the mines and also attended evening classes and a school for
public speaking, and at the age of twenty he founded the
first youth groups of the Christian Miners' Movement. He
himself became secretary of one youth group and later Trade
Union Secretary in Xiederschlesien, Zwickau and the Ruhr.
In 1930 he became editor of the Westdeutsche Arbeiter-
zeitung. In everything he said or wrote, he consistently
opposed Nazism and all its works, and continually asserted
his fundamental precept, that 'Christian family life is the
basis of society'.

When the Ketteler Wacht, the successor to the West-
deutsche Arbeiterzeitung, was finally banned, he continued
to air his convictions by any possible means, in talks to small
groups and in private conversation. He also worked in close

co-operation with Bernhard Letterhaus in building a net-
work among trade unions and Catholic working-men's asso-
ciations in preparation for the attempt of 20 July 1944, and
for this he was arrested on 12 August, sentenced to death on
15 January 1945, and executed on the 23rd.
* # *

The following extracts from one of Nikolaus Gross's earlier
works, Sieben um einen Tisch (Seven round a Table) give
some indication of his attitudes and ideas :

'Childish dreams pale and a guiding purpose for living takes
their place : it is our task to arouse this purpose in children/

'What kind of a picture should we set before them? I believe
it should be a picture of a man of character and maturity; of a
man who develops his individuality in freedom, but without
losing his way; of an independent man to whom ability is both
a goal and a serious responsibility, who masters unruly dreams
and longings by the strength of his mind and discipline of his
will; of a man whose wealth lies within him, who seeks sim-
plicity and integrity, is true to himself/

'Sometimes my heart is heavy and the task seems insoluble
when I measure my own imperfections and my own inadequacy
against my obligations and responsibilities. When I look at my
children at meal times, and listen to their gay chatter, when I
reflect on the many roads which must cross, converge and part
in the course of their lives, when I look into this life and seek
an answer to its problems, then I find only one. Every human
being is the keeper of his own destiny. He cannot evade or
mitigate it in any way without being untrue to himself/

In a farewell letter to his wife and seven young children
he wrote :

*. . . Do not fear that I feel any great dismay in the face of
death. I have prayed every day that God will give us both
strength to accept with patience and humility whatever He
decides or permits. And in prayer I find peace and calm.

'I think of you with love and deep gratitude. How good God
is, and how rich He has made my life. He gave me love and
mercy and a loving wife and good children, and I shall be
grateful for that for the rest of my life. I thank you my dear
ones for everything you have done for me; forgive me if I have
ever hurt you, or failed in my duty towards you . . .
50

"Sometimes in the long months of my captivity I have won-
dered what will become of you when I am gone. I realised long
ago that your fate does not depend on me. If it is God's will
that I should no longer be with you, then He has help ready
for you which is independent of me. . . /

51

ERICH KNAUF

21 February 18952 May 1944

ERICH KXAUF came from a working class family in Saxony.
At fourteen he began his apprenticeship as a compositor; and
in the spring of 1914 he spent a few weeks wandering through
Italy, Greece and Turkey. From 1915-18 he was on active
service, and in 1920 took part in the suppression of the Kapp
Putsch in Gera.

After teaching for a year at a college in Tinz, Knauf
turned to political and literary journalism and from 1922 to
1928 was editor of the Plauen Volkszeitung. His articles on
painting and pictures and his theatre reviews were widely
admired, but also involved him in a series of law suits and
fines. For several years after this he worked with the Guten-
berg Book Guild and at the same time wrote a novel about
the Kapp Putsch, a biography of Daumier and a book of
profiles of twenty-two artists from Daumier to Kollwitz.
When the Nazis took over the Book Guilds in 1933 Knauf
resigned and a year later, as the result of a review in the
8-Uhr-Abendblatt, he was expelled from the Reich Press
Association and had to spend ten weeks in the concentration
camps of Oranienburg and Lichtenburg.

After his release he turned to advertising for industry and
for films, and continued this work until, on 28 March 1944, he
and Erich Ohser, who had become famous, under the name
of E. 0. Plauen, for his human and loveable drawings in the
Father and Son series, were arrested.

The following extracts from the documents in the case
against Erich Knauf and Erich Ohser speak for themselves :

From Captain Schultz Berlin

To F., for the attention of the 22 February 1944

Head of the Department.
WPrF/H

Since the destruction of my flat at Trabenerstrasse 49, my

wife and I have been living in Berlin-Kaulsdorf, Ani-

Feldberg 3. The Publicity Officer of the Terra Film Company,

Erich Knauf, and Erich Ohser, a cartoonist, live in the same

52

house . . . The following are remarks made by one or other
of them on various occasions, and are rendered word for word
whenever possible:

Knauf, discussing an article by Dr Goebbels which appeared
in Das Reich, said inter alia: This little rat is paid 1,500
marks for each article, even though he is the liopaganda
Minister and ought to write them for nothing. . . .'

Ohser agreed, saying that he, as a regular contributor to
Das Reich, knew all about it, and that Dr Goebbels, as so-called
Minister, had so strangled and enraged all German artists that
German art, as any blind man could see, had gone to the
dogs. . . .

Ohser : 'Himmler only keeps his job by ordering between 80
and 100 executions a day ... I know that from the way my
own circle of friends is dwindling. . . ."

Knauf: 'All the worst shirkers are in the SS. . . /

Knauf and Ohser: *A German victory would be the greatest
misfortune, for only then can Hitler, so he himself says, become
a real National Socialist . . /

I have held up this information until now in order to be
quite sure that I had interpreted Knauf and Ohser's views
correctly.

(signed) SCHULTZ

53

From The Undersecretary Berlin

To The Minister 29 March 1944

The first reports on the interrogation of the accused in the
state-loyalty affair are to hand. . . .

The Gestapo official in charge, Lietzenburg, hopes to extract
a confession from the accused in the course of further inter-
rogation. If however no results are forthcoming, the accused
will be confronted with Captain Schultz.

I will keep you informed.

Heil Hitler!

(signed) GUTTERER

Office of the Under-Secretary Berlin

Memorandum on the discussion with 1 April 1944

the Under Secretary

Subject: Ohser and Knauf

. . . The Minister now wants Freisler to handle the main pro-
ceedings himself, if possible before Easter. The Minister also
requests, as the matter concerns him personally, that Freisler
' should consult him by telephone before sentence is passed, as
he may wish to reduce it. R. is not convinced that this is the
best way to handle the matter and suggested that Freisler
might, when he had given some thought to the matter, get in
touch with the Minister by telephone.

The Under-Secretary thereupon telephoned Freisler and fixed
the proceedings for next Tuesday or Wednesday, before the
People's Court. It has proved impossible to obtain the services
of independent judges at such short notice, so Freisler will have
to select judges from the ranks of the Berlin Party Leaders,
in so far as they have been appointed judges of the People's
Court by the Fuhrer. Freisler must get in touch with the
Minister again before the proceedings begin.

Action : Consult Dr Metten, Public Prosecutor's Department.

(signed) DR PRAUSE

From The Undersecretary Berlin

To The Minister 1 April 1944

. . . Captain and Mrs Schultz have agreed to give evidence
on oath against the accused. They give the impression of being
reliable. The matter is now being passed on to the Chief Public
Prosecutor at the People's Court. Care will be taken to expedite
affairs.

I will keep you informed.

Heil Hitler!

(signed) GUTTERER

54

Berlin

R. 1408/3.4.44/372-1,4 3 April 1944

From Dr Schmidt-Leonhardt,
Ministerial Director,
To The Minister

Subject: Case against Ohser and Knauf

According to my instructions I called on President Freisler
and discussed the matter with him in detail, and afterwards,
at his request, with Lautz, the Chief Public Prosecutor. Ohser
has now retracted his partial confession, so that new witnesses
will have to be called to ensure his conviction. These are now
being questioned. For this reason the documents cannot as yet
be sent to the Chief Public Prosecutor, much less to the Court,
in fact the transfer certainly cannot take place before tomorrow
morning. In spite of these difficulties, matters will be expedited
so that the main trial can take place on Wednesday at 9 a.m.
President Freisler, who will be the Presiding Judge, is giving
the matter his personal attention ... he says he never, on
principle, predicts the outcome of a trial, but implies that two
death sentences are probable; an opinion which, in new of the
severity of the charges, I am inclined to share. . . .

Heil Hitler!

pp. S

R.M.f.V.u.P Berlin

R. 1403/3.4.44/372-1,4 4 April 1944

Subject: Material from Dr Metten, Public Prosecutor

To Dr Freisler

President of the People's Court URGENT

Berlin W9, Bettevuestrasse By Special Messenger

Dear Mr President,

At your request I am sending you the following documents
concerning the trial of Ohser and Knauf:

1. A facsimile and 10 photostat copies of the caricatures
signed Plauen.

2. Two newspaper cuttings of speeches by the Fukrer and
by the Minister of Propaganda, Dr Goebbels, which are con-
cerned with German artists.

3. A letter from the Personnel Office, dated 4 April 1944.

So far as (1) is concerned, the photostat copies of the cari-
catures might be included in the material for the proceedings.
But I must ask you to return the other items to me as soon as

55

possible, as they are the only copies we have and are in frequent
use.

The selection under (2) is very meagre, as the press-cutting
section cannot for the moment find quotations to meet your
requirements. I have given instructions for further searches
and if anything turns up I will let you have it at once. May I
have these two cuttings back?

The information from the local Personnel Office is also very
meagre, for although it contains useful personal particulars,
especially about the events of the day the two of them were
bombed out, there is really nothing of any political significance.
The Personnel Office say they cannot get hold of any such
information until this afternoon at the earliest, as they must
consult the Party Offices in the districts where the accused
formerly lived, as the Office in the district where they now live
has nothing. There is no other relevant information about either
of them, either political or criminal, but if anything else comes
in you shall have it as quickly as possible.

HeH Hitler!

Yours sincerely,
pp.

(signed) DR M.

R.140S/4.4.44/S72-l,4 Berlin

Official in Charge: Dr Metten, 4 April 1944

Chief Public Prosecutor
To The Minister

Subject: Case against Ohser and Knauf

A new problem has arisen : Thierack, the Minister of Justice,
who is responsible to the Fuhrer for all cases concerned with
the undermining of morale, has asked for an interview and,
so I am told, demanded that he shall be fully informed of the
facts of the case tomorrow morning. The proceedings scheduled
for tomorrow morning cannot therefore take place. Herr
Thierack will however see to it that they are held on Thursday,
if this is at all possible. He has been informed of your interest
and of your desire for speed. I will hear his views tomorrow
morning, and will then know whether the proceedings have
in fact been fixed for Thursday. I will then report to you
immediately.

The Minister of Justice's request to be informed in advance
of the facts cannot be refused.

Heil Hitler!

(signed) SCHMIDT-LEONHARDT
56

R.1403/4.4.44/372-L4 5 April 1944

Official in Charge: Dr Metten Berlin

To The Minister

Subject: Case against Ohser and Knauf

President Freisler informs us that the proceedings are
definitely fixed for tomorrow. 6 April, at 9 a.m. Dr Metten of my
department will be present, and a report will be sent to you
immediately afterwards. President Freisler also hopes to be
able to send you details of the sentence early tomorrow after-
noon.

Heil Hitler!

\signed. SCHMIDT- LEONHABDT

From Dr Metten, Berlin

Chief Public Prosecutor, 6 April 1944

To The Minister

Subject: Case against Ohser and Knauf

The session was postponed until 10 a.m. owing to the
announcement at 9 a.m. that Ohser had committed suicide. The
proceedings were conducted by President Freisler in his
capacity as Chairman of the Criminal Committee of the
People's Court; with him was another professional judge and
also, in an honorary capacity, Ahnels, Chairman of the District
Council, Winter, a local Party Leader and von Mangold, a
Labour official.

As soon as the charge (continual undermining of morale and
aiding the enemy) had been read out on behalf of the Chief
Public Prosecutor the accused, Knauf, was given a hearing.
Interrogation revealed that he was married, had no children,
had fought in the war, had been awarded the Iron Cross
(Second Class) and a medal for wounds received in action, and
that he was the author among other things of the songs The
Stars of my Homeland and Belb from Home. With regard to
his political activities it was established that he, like his father,
was a former member of the Social Democratic Party and that
he had worked on Tribune, a Social Democratic newspaper
appearing in Plauen, and with the Gutenberg Book Guild.
Knauf denied every charge.

57

The chief witness for the prosecution, Captain Schultz, then
gave evidence. He repeated his accusations against Knauf. His
wife, who was then called to the witness box confirmed and
amplified all he said. Both witnesses were quite convincing.
Captain Schultz's evidence was reinforced by the fact that he
had made detailed notes of the relevant remarks made by
Ohser and Knauf.

The death sentence, which the accused heard with com-
posure, is absolute on pronouncement, since there is no legal
appeal against sentences of the People's Court. After the report
of the Judge's summing-up has been completed, the documents
go to the Minister of Justice. He, by virtue of the special powers
invested in him by the Fuhrer, may order the execution on his
own responsibility; or, should he decide that a pardon might
be granted, or should any further evidence be laid before him,
he may put the matter before the Fuhrer for decision.

Heil Hitler!
(signed!) DR METTEN

President of the Peoples Court
Berlin W9, Bellevuestrasse IS

11 April 1944

Extracts from the Summing-Up :

'. . . It is easy enough to understand how the accused came
to make his demoralising and defeatist remarks, when one
considers his observation that our victory would be the greatest
possible misfortune, because only then could the Fuhrer
become a real National Socialist. It is in fact hate of National
Socialism, and of our uncompromising achievement in carrying
out the programme which is the synthesis of our way of life,
that has driven him to it. He has dug his own grave, his
political development has gone full circle . . . He, a man who
had an important position in the cultural life of our country, a
man whose honour should have kept him to the straight and
narrow way, has come to this!

*We would not be true National Socialists if we were to
match such deeds- the deeds of a man who has lost his honour
for ever with anything less than the death penalty.

TCnauf, since he has been found guilty, must also pay the
costs.

(signed) FREISLER (signature illegible)
58

Offices of the Minister of Justice Berlin W. 8

IV g lOb 66*b/44 Wilhelrnstrasse ft5

From Dr. Frankc\ 21 April 1<*44

Office of the Public Prosecutor, URGENT

To The Chief Public Prosecutor,
Peoples Court, Berlin
Personal (or official representative
Enclosures: Order of 20 April 1944 original

1 copy of the Order

With reference to the trial before the People's Court on
9 April 1944, in which Erich Knauf was condemned to death.
I am sending you the original order of 20 April 1944, together
with a certified copy, with the request that the necessary further
steps may be taken with all possible speed.

Please do not make this information public, either through
the press or by proclamation.

PP

(signed) WOLLMER

Office of the Public Prosecutor
People's Court
Ref. 4 J 777/44

Account
for the case against Erich Knauf

Fee for the Death Penalty (see Articles 49/52 of the

Penal Code) 300.

Postage (see Article 72(1) of the Penal Code) ... 1 . 84

Fee for the Counsel for the Defence, Ahlsdorff,
Barrister, Berlin-Lichterfelde-Ost, Gartnerstrasse
lOa (Article 72(6) of the Penal Code) 81.60

Charge for Prison Maintenance, 6 April-2 May 1944 44.

Costs for carrying out the sentence 158.18

Postage for sending Account .12

TOTAL R.M. 585.74

Responsible for Payment : The Heirs of Erich Knauf . For the
personal attention of Mrs Erna Knauf, Berlin-Tempelhof,
Manfred-von-Richthoven-Strasse 13 5 bei Fa. Gilbert, Mach.

The President Berlin W 9

of the People's Court 6 April 1944

Bellevuestrasse 15
Tel 22 18 23

Business Ref

(Please quote in reply)

To The Minister for Popular Enlightenment
and Propaganda, Dr Goebbels
Berlin W. 9
1 Enclosure

Dear Minister,

I have the honour to send you the Sentence, passed today
in the People's Court, on Knauf.

HeH Hitler!

Yours sincerely,

(FREISLER)

, to

'

^ h - ir ' d * s Urtffil 4w d Toll
r. r* a u f gefillt njit, u iib.-

H*U Hitler I
Jhr aehr

The President Berlin \V 9

of the Peoples Court 11 April 1944

Bellevuestrasse 15
Tel 22 IS 23

Business Ref

(Please quote in reply)
Enclosures

Dear Ministerial Director and Party Member

Schmidt-Leonhardt,

Now that the case against Knauf is complete, I do not want
the moment to pass without thanking you once more for the
material you put at my disposal, which was most useful during
the proceedings and in the preparation of the case.

Heil Hitler!

Yours sincerely,

(FREISLER)

erit vr.ri*hlR, l.into r.^ctoal ffir clt

ADOLF REICHWEIN

8 October 189820 October 1944

ADOLF REICHWEIN grew up in Oberosbach and as a boy
ran wild in the Taunus hills. He matriculated in 1916 and was
immediately conscripted. In 1917 he was seriously wounded.
After the war he studied philosophy, history and political
economy and became a Doctor of Philosophy as early as 1920.
His thesis appeared as a book under the title China und
Europa : geistige und kunstleriche Beziehungen (China and
Europe : Intellectual and Artistic Ties).

While still quite young he entered the Prussian Ministry
for Religion, Education and Cultural Affairs, but soon turned
to practical teaching, first in a college for adult education
and later as a university professor. He published four books,
Die Rohstoffe der Erd'e (The Raw Materials of the Earth),
Mexiko erwacht (Mexico Awakes), Erlebnisse mil Mensch
und Tier (Experiences with Man and Beast), and Schaffendez
Schulvolk (Creative Work in School).

Susanne Suhr, who was in touch with him from the time
he was in Jena up to the resistance days, says of Adolf
Reichwein :

'He was an unusual man, with unusual intellectual and
human qualities everyone said so. This must have been the
secret of his fascination, for he had no trace of self-satisfaction.
It was as though the charm of youthfulness, of early promise,
surrounded him like a tragic aura : for he never really reached
maturity. Reichwein was the child of the youth movement, but
tried always to live it down; and fate seems to have lent a hand
while he was still young. At the age of twenty-two as a young
Doctor of Philosophy in the Ministry he was able to try out his
theories and ideals on adult education, and soon afterwards
as director of the College of Thuringia, to put them into prac-
tice. In this work, with students and workers of the Zeiss factory
in Jena, he came in touch with all manner of men and remained
in touch for the rest of his life. He longed for the day when
new intellectual and ethical bonds would break down the time-
honoured acceptance of a class-ridden society. He also realised
that enthusiastic idealism must sooner or later give way to
62

Photograph taken in the People's Court

political activity, but it was a long time before he moved in
that direction.

*A romantic love of adventure went side by side with a
capacity for sober and disciplined work. He tramped through
America, went to Japan as a seaman, smuggled weapons for
the Kuomintang, fought against the rebels in Mexico, and
thereby but quite incidentally collected a wealth of material
for his books and lectures.

In the Prussian Ministry, as Personal Adviser to the Minister

'Becker), Reichwein played a decisive part in the founding of
teachers' training cofleges, and himself went to the Teachers'
College in Halle in 1930 as Professor of History and Social
Studies. He rated example high, as an essential to all facets of
teaching (perhaps even to the teaching of physical discipline
for he himself flew a small sports aeroplane ! ). Up to this time
he had always avoided connection with any political party, or
any active political work : but as Hitler stood menacingly at the
door and many people began fearfully to disown their former
opinions, Reichwein avowed his allegiance to the Social Demo-
cratic Party; just as after 1933, when every'aeroplane had to be
marked with a swastika, he gave up his first machine because
he could no longer fly as a "free man".

The National Socialists soon removed him from his professor-
ship. He retired into the isolated existence of a village school-
master, although many glittering offers came his way.

'He enjoyed his work, but developments under the Hitler
regime troubled him deeply and he began to take an increas-
ingly active part in resistance. Known only to a few trusted
friends, he became a sworn member of the group planning the
attempt on Hitler's life, and thanks to his unusually wide circle
of friends he was able to tie up many of the loose ends; he
was for instance the main link between the Kreisau and other
resistance groups, particularly with those among industrial
workers. He worked closely with many old friends and many
new ones, all at one in their intent and purpose; and his office
in the Prinzessinnen Schlosschen, Unter den Linden he was
then working at the Folklore Museum in Berlin was a cover
for many secret meetings and discussions. The way from ethics
and awareness to political action had not been easy for him;
but his courage, his loyalty to his friends and his sense of the
moral obligation to do what was necessary, whatever the con-
sequences, led him without faltering on the path he had chosen.

While the secret preparations were in full swing, Reichwein
was betrayed by a police spy, arrested and imprisoned. During
the trial before the People's Court, under the presidency of the
raging Freisler, he, who was as gentle as he was indomitable,
must have suffered greatly. On 20 October, he was executed,
and so joiaed many of his friends who had been condemned
earlier.'

On 16 October 1944 he write to his wife :

1 need hardly say that my thoughts are still with life. But it
is hard to write about that now, much though it might help.
Looking back over the decades, one thing stands out; how rich
64

and rare these years have been for me. The misery of the first
war fades into the background, just as other memories stand
out, clear and strong : the happy carefree days of my youth in
the country, my ten years in the Wandervogel, with rambles
near and far, the friendships of my youth, the happy student
days in Frankfurt and Marburg, and the firm friendships that
sprang from them, and then the joys and satisfaction of my
teaching work; then the rare gifts of my life, my travels in
Europe, America and East Asia, the four years of flying and
the bird's-eye view of the world, and the days and nights of
scientific work in between; and finally the richest and most
precious of all: the twelve years with you and the children.
How much reason to be grateful ! '

65

WALTHER ARNDT

8 January 189126 June 1944

WALTHER ARXDT studied at Breslau University and, like his
father, chose natural science as his subject. In 1911 he took
part for the first time in an expedition abroad, and on 18
August 1914, having passed his final examinations, he
received his degree as Doctor of Medicine. He subsequently
volunteered for active service, was taken prisoner by the
Russians on 23 October 1914, while he was a medical NCO
in a field hospital, and was repatriated two and a half years
later as part of an exchange of medical personnel. In May
1917 he returned to Russia with the Prisoners-of-War Wel-
fare Commission set up by the War Office and was captured
a second time, as he had predicted, and eventually returned
home in 1919 by a circuitous route via Japan, the Philippines,
America and Sweden. In 1920, he took die degree of Doctor
of Philosophy and afterwards accepted a post with the
Zoological Museum in Berlin, where he worked first as an
assistant and later as a curator and professor.

Side by side with the tasks of a museum official, Walther
Arndt produced and published numerous scientific works.
He took an active part in the work of various scientific
organisations and was always ready to take on any tasks
concerned with public education which might come his way.

In the course of his various exploring expeditions he made
many contacts abroad. (His address book contained, in addi-
tion to 600 German addresses, about 400 foreign addresses
ranging over 47 countries). Abroad, his importance had been
recognised very early : In 1929, the Peking Society of Natural
History appointed him a corresponding member, and in 1932
the Bulgarian Society for Scientific Research made him an
honorary member; in 1938 he became a member of the Inter-
national Zoological Nomenclature Commission and in the
same year he received a medal from the King of the Belgians;
in 1940, he was appointed an honorary member of the
German Zoological Society.

Arndt was known for his selfless and idealistic devotion to
his scientific work; but in 1944 his doom was sealed by a

remark he made after an air-raid, which he had spent putting
out fire bombs in his museum, and which was reported to the
authorities by one of his colleagues and a girl friend of his
youth. He appears to have said something like this : 'Now
this is the end of the Third Reich, it only remains to bring the
guilty to punishment*; and for that he was sentenced to death
by the People's Court on 11 May 1944.

The notes he wrote in prison made it quite clear that he
knew his fate. On 22 April 1944, for instance :

If my life, which was so rich and happy, must now come to
an end, perhaps it is according to the old saying "They whom
the Gods love, die young". But wherever I may come to rest in
the great universe, my soul will always turn towards our home/

Before his death on 26 June 1944 he wrote to his sister :

Tve just been given the chance to send you a few lines. I
think it's really better for all three of us that these days of

67

waiting are coming to an end today, though there have been
some good hours among them . . . and now I feel rather like
Faust : the hand moves, time stands still, the hour has come. . . .
'How often have I opened the hymn book at the hymns we
sang at father's funeral I shall do so again today and said
them or sung them to myself. And I've just thought of his motto:
"Be true until death . . .".'

His last words, before the sentence was carried out, on
26 June 1944 were : 'My sister, my own part of the country,
and my scientific work were the loves of my life.'

The following is an extract from the obituary which
appears in the Archiv fur Hydrobiologie, 1947, volume XII,
pp. 614-621 :

Now, as I try to recapture the delightful personality of my
unforgettable friend, in all its simple greatness and its absolute
integrity, the conviction grows on me that all the characteristics
which we loved and admired in him, sprang from three sources.
The one which we may well regard as the main spring of his
whole nature was human kindness, and the other two were an
absolute love of truth and an unselfish devotion to duty.

If I say that human kindness was his main characteristic I
must add that it did not take the form of mere benevolence
towards his fellow creatures : it was rather a case of active and
positive kindness. I must give myself the pleasure of mention-
ing at least one concrete example: I remember how I once
asked him when he thought he would be promoted to the post
of Curator of the Berlin Museum. *Well,' he said, *a vacancy has
just occurred, and it would be my turn according to seniority.
But I have decided to step down in favour of X, because he is
a married man and so needs the security of a permanent post.'

In his capacity as a research worker, however, it was not his
kindness which took first place, but his absolute love of truth
and objectivity, and his real devotion to his work. One could
always rely absolutely on any statement which might appear
in one of Arndt's publications; his method of compiling the
relevant data from his reading, and the facts gathered by
observation, was exemplary; never did he deviate by a hair's
breadth, for the sake of a theory or for the purpose of more
effective presentation, from what he regarded as the strongest
probability on the strength of the proven facts.

The very quality which distinguished both him and his work
was, finally, also the cause of his early and terrible death. In a
time and circumstance where hate was preached as a virtue,

a man whose whole being was inspired by kindness to his fellow
men and by an unshakable love of truth, was bound to come
to grief sooner or later. Maybe there was nothing so particularly
admirable in his frankness with people whom he believed he
could trust; but none can fail to admire the great courage which
Arndt displayed before his 'judges'; that is to say, in the face
of certain death. With the help of the innumerable references
and petitions handed in on his behalf, he might possibly have
saved his life. The fact that he did not withdraw or qualify
his assertion that he would sooner sacrifice his life in support
of truth, than save it by denial, denotes a greatness of mind
before which we must bow in admiration and gratitude.

But for the men like Arndt, the avowed lovers of truth, one
might despair of scientific objectivity. He did not die in vain.
For this man who was condemned by the court as being 'for
ever without honour', died in fact for tie honour of the German
people, for the honour of science and for the honour of the
human race.

PROFESSOR ERNST MATIUES,
Museo e Laboratorio Zoologico da Universidade Coimbra.

3 FRIENDSHIP

UNDER totalitarian rule, uniformity is everything and
individuality counts for nothing. If tibe individual pits his
will against the state, his will must be broken.

One chapter in the history of resistance to National
Socialism concerns the simple stories of help to friends and
neighbours, help which is normally taken for granted but
which takes on a special significance when it involves grave
personal risk. People were hidden and people were warned.
Money was collected by the neighbours and friends of the
man who was in trouble and, as unobtrusively as possible,
put at the disposal of his family. The hunted and the
persecuted found refuge in the homes of their friends, who
at risk of their own lives hid them for weeks and months on
end. People who lived near the frontiers, fishermen and
mountaineers, smuggled those under pressure out of the
country. There were employers who took on men and women
in need of protection, officials and soldiers who failed exactly
to observe the regulations and thousands of people, of all
kinds from the market woman who gave food, to the civil
servant who falsified papers who stood by citizens of Jewish
origin, in stark opposition to those who did not. When such
actions were discovered, the wrath of the authorities did not
descend only on the 'guilty' man; he had always to reckon
that his family would also be involved, and the infamous
Sippenhaft (family arrest) spared neither children nor old
people.

There was also a smaller band of people, which should
not be forgotten, who believed that they would by dying ease
the fate of others; and no-one will ever know how many took
their own lives while under arrest in order to take their
secrets with them.

Personal stories are legion, but the following is typical of
many: Dr Philipp Schaefer, a 45-year-old scientist, was
executed on 13 May 1943, after proceedings against the
Harro Schulze-Boysen group. He had wanted to rescue an
old Jewish couple and had tried to climb into their flat, where
they had turned on the gas taps, by a rope. But the rope
broke. He was badly hurt and was taken to hospital, where
70

he was arrested. During the trial he was accused of having
failed to report his friends to the Gestapo. He replied:
'Gentlemen, I have been asked why I did not report this
affair. I can only say that I ain not a police odd-job man.'

71

JOACHIM GOTTSCHALK

I x the Stahnsdorf cemetery in Berlin there lies at rest an actor
and his family. On the gravestone, put up by friends, are
engraved their names, their dates of birth and the day of
their common death:

JOACHIM GOTTSCHALK

Born 10 April 1904

META GOTTSCHALK

Born 13 August 1902

MICHAEL GOTTSCHALK

Born 19 February 1933
Died 6 November 1941

Hugo Gau-Hamm, who was in the same company as
Gottsdbalk during the years in question, gives the following
account of the events which lie behind this inscription :

Joachim Gottschalk, the son of a doctor, had been at sea for
three years when he decided to go on the stage. He built up a
reputation in Leipzig and Frankfurt-am-Main and then signed
a contract with Eugen Klopfer for the 1938-39 season in the
Biilowplatz Theatre in Berlin, which was by that time only
nominally connected with the People's Theatre Company,
meanwhile disbanded by the Nazis.

Gottschalk's first rdle was Fiesko, which he played with great
success. His talent aroused justifiable expectations, he was very
popular and his upright, straightforward character was a
symbol of loyalty at a time when personal relationships were
often very strained. He was known as 'Joschf to his friends and
colleagues. To his great circle of admirers he seemed young,
happy and successful, and only a few people knew that a dark
shadow hung over the life and being of this quiet, unostenta-
tious actor; but among his closest friends the fact that his wife
was a Jewess was often discussed.

Gottschalk knew that so long as Gustaf Griindgens directed
the state theatres in Berlin, actors with Jewish wives would be
able, with special permission, to cany on. But his was a special
72

Photo by Atdier Rutk Wilketmi

case: his ability, his success on the stage and his youth had
attracted the attention of those responsible for making 'politi-
cally valuable' films. He won respect as a film actor in his first
two parts and after his appearance with Paula Wessely in Ein
Leben long his natural wish for success was fully realised, and
he achieved widespread popularity.

The popularity of an artist who was married to a Jewess and
who, as it appeared, could not be persuaded to separate from

73

his wife, created difficulties for the Minister of Propaganda of
the Third Reich. 1 can no longer bear the sight of him. . . /
Goebbels' well-known intimation was readily understood, indeed
it had to be understood, by his willing minions: Gottschalk
was not wanted, he would not be allowed to continue to prac-
tise his profession in the 'cultural' sphere, he would be banned
from the stage, from films and from broadcasting . . . unless,
of course, he would yield to the demand, repeatedly made and
as often refused, that he should leave his wife.

If on the other hand all sources of income were stopped, he
would be unable to fulfil the many obligations he had incurred
while he was receiving a substantial income from his film work.
When he made this point, it was suggested to him that he
should go on tour with the so-called 'Strength-through-Joy'
organisation. Gottschalk was strongly opposed to such a dan-
gerous offer : if he had to leave his wife and child alone, then
he would do so only as a soldier, since the wife and child of a
soldier must be protected from persecution. But when he
volunteered for military service his offer was refused.

The strain increased, and became torture. The day came
when a rehearsal at the Hebbel Theatre could not begin
because Gottschalk was missing. Then it was announced in an
atmosphere of emotion, in flat, broken sentences full of shock
and grief, that the Gottschalk family had chosen suicide.

His wife and child were first lulled to sleep with veronal,
then Gottschalk arranged everything exactly as he had agreed
with his wife a little earlier, and finally he himself took leave
of the world and his friends. Think of the words of Kleist,' he
wrote in his last letter to his sister Ulrike, The truth is that
there was no help for me on this earth/

The actor Ernst Sattler laid a wreath on their graves on
behalf of all his colleagues. No word of remembrance was per-
mitted, but the old grey-haired priest spoke courageously on
that dismal November day, in spite of the presence of Nazi
'supervisors'. He rejected the reproaches of those who had des-
cribed the Gottschalk's action in killing their child as irrespon-
sible, saying that in his opinion they were on the contrary
prompted by a high sense of responsibility, in that they had
decided not to leave their child alone in such a barbaric world.

So much is easily forgotten. Today, when one reflects on the
sudden death of the Gottschalk family, one can see that it pro-
bably helped to save many other people, living under a similar
strain, from a greater misery; and so one can find some sense,
ironical though it may be, in this tragic story.

Gottschalk was a man of high principle and, for what it is
74

worth, some of his friends believe that such considerations,
the possibility that others who were in similar distress might be
helped, played no small part in his decision to die.

Q I 1

Farewell message from Meta and Joachim Gottschalk, written
a few hours before their suicide.

(Translation)

5 November 1941.
Fanny my dear,

Take this brooch as a souvenir, and goodbye. Thank you for
your true friendship, you know what I wish for you !

My love to you afl, and you must not mourn for us, you know
we are happy. Thank you for everything,

and good luck,

META

About the money that you lent me. I have communicated
with my sister.

Greetings,

JOACHIM
75

LILO GLOEDEN

19 December 190330 November 1944

THE death register for 1944 includes under the numbers
3078/80 the following names: Erich Gloeden, Architect,
born 23 August 1888, Berlin. Elisabeth Charlotte Gloeden,
born 19 December 1903, Cologne. Elisabeth Kusnitzky, born
21 January 1878, Strasbourg.

Their crime is given as treason; the penalty, death; the
date of conviction, 27 November 1944; the date and place of
execution, 30 November 1944, Berlin. A short note states that
the condemned had hidden Fritz Lindemann, a former
general, in their home for six weeks, while aware of his being
guilty of treason.

Dr Lilo Gloeden was the daughter of a Cologne doctor,
named Kusnitzky, and of his wife, formerly Baroness von
Liliencron. In 19>38 she married Erich Gloeden, an architect.
She was known as a woman with many artistic leanings and
as a charming and conscientious wife and daughter. Her
mother, who had settled in Berlin after the death of her
husband, spent most of her time with her.

Lilo was a woman of great integrity with a deep sense of
justice. She and her husband found die conditions of those
days quite unbearable, and were passionate opponents of the
Nazi dictatorship. Whenever they could, they helped people
who were oppressed; and in particular they concealed vic-
tims of anti-Jewish and political persecution (among others
Dr Goerdeler is said to have hidden for a while in their
home).

Soon after 20 July a friend of Erich Gloeden's, from Dres-
den, brought to their house a General Lindemann, whom
they did not know before, and for whose arrest the Gestapo
had issued a warrant and offered a reward of half a million
Reichmarks. He stayed longer than had been agreed, for it
was obviously impossible for him to find other accommoda-
tion. On 3 September a strong contingent of police seized
him at the flat, and shot him. Erich, Lilo and her mother
were arrested, and subjected by the Gestapo to terrible
interrogation.
76

Photo by VoUubiUungsamt Charlottenbiarg

Some years after the war, when the informer was on trial,
fellow prisoners revealed that Gloeden had, in the autumn
of 1944, tried until the end to protect the two women. He
had maintained that they did not know that it was Linde-
mann who was living with them; the General, he explained,

77

had been introduced under a false name. But when the death
sentence was passed on her husband, Lilo Gloeden declared
that she had from the start known the identity of the man
they had sheltered, and that she wanted to die with her
husband. Then old Mrs Kusnitzky said that she too was
aware of her son-in-law's and daughter's complicity, and that
life would have no further meaning for her after their death.
At intervals of two minutes, man, wife and mother were
beheaded in Plotzensee prison.

78

LOTHAR ERDMANN

12 October 1888 IS September 1939

LOTHAR ERDMANN spent his childhood in Halle, where
his father was a professor of philosophy. He matriculated
in Bonn in 1905, studied history and philosophy at Freiburg
University and then went to London for a post-graduate
course. There he came in contact with the Fabians, and so

Photo by Atelier Atcauttim

79

began his allegiance to socialism. He volunteered in 1914
and later became a company commander on the western
front. After the war he worked for the Trade Union Inter-
national in Amsterdam and simultaneously held a post with
Wolff Telegraph Office. From 1924 to 1933 he was secretary
of the German Trade Union Council in Berlin and during
that time became editor of Die Arbeit.

When the National Socialists took possession of the Trade
Union offices, on 2 May 1933, Lothar Erdmann was among
those who were reprimanded : but the new regime were at
pains to win him over to their side. He consistently rejected
their advances, including the request that he should con-
tribute to the Arbeitsfront, the Nazi press organ, in spite
of threats that he would otherwise be handed over to the SS.
During the next few years he tried to keep going as a free-
lance journalist, contributing to papers like Die Hilfe, but he
and his family lived in very reduced circumstances.

In a letter dated 19 July 1934, he wrote to his son :

'Many older people demand of the young enthusiasm, devo-
tion, faith and obedience. Enthusiasm? Yes, but only for men
and ideas which one can support with passion and conviction
after one has subjected them to every test. Faith? Certainly,
but only in men worthy of trust, and in thoughts which emanate
from truth and which need no justification, which are in them-
selves convincing, positive and realistic. The wares which are
to-day peddled in the market places are suspiciously reminis-
cent of a bargain basement stocked with cheap and shoddy
goods.

'Obedience? Yes, but only when a simple purpose demands a
definite chain of command in the army for instance. In other
situations obedience may lead us to abandon our own future,
and that of the nation, to the accidents of history and to blind
historical chance, which often enough places leadership in the
hands of a group, under whom passive obedience amounts to a
crime against this and all future generations.

*No, the duty to keep our heads above water, critically to
examine people and opinions, and freely and objectively to
decide what can be done, was never so pressing as it is in these
obscure times. For true faith comes only through responsible
and individual thinking: it is better that you keep your
enthusiasms to yourself, than that your judgment be influenced
by other people/

80

At the outbreak of war, on 1 September 1939, Lothar
Erdmann was arrested by the Gestapo for 'preventive
reasons'. A week later, he was sent to the Sachsenhausen
concentration camp.

On the way to the camp, a fellow prisoner stumbled and
was beaten by the guards. Lothar Erdmann protested against
this treatment, telling the SS that such behaviour was
impossible. At this the SS guards struck him also, and on
arrival at the camp took him to the Commandant. To the
question whether he knew why he was in a concentration
came, Erdmann replied: *As an opponent of National
Socialism'; and to the Commandant's second question,
whether he knew what obedience meant, he retorted that
there were various kinds of obedience; he himself had been
an officer during the first world war, and his two sons were
now serving at the front.

Lothar was sentenced to punishment by drilling, which
was to be increased by an hour each day. On the sixth day
he broke down. This was labelled mutiny; so he was bound
to a pole for three hours, to be beaten and kicked. The results
were broken ribs, torn neck tendons and internal injuries.
On 18 September 1939, death put an end to his suffering.

81

GERTRUD SEELE

22 September 191712 January 1945

'Michaela, my dearest little daughter, today your mother
must die ... I have a great favour to ask of you, my child : you
must be brave and sensible and try to make your grandparents
happy. Your father is .... and was born on 5 March 1907, in
Leipzig. You will find out the rest from your grandparents.
You have all my dearest wishes for your life, and please love
me always and never forget me. My heart weeps for you
and for my parents. Do be nice to them and give them joy, by
growing up to be able and good. I picture you in my arms, I

press you to my heart and kiss you

Goodbye, my darling little daughter

from your despairing MOTHER/

(The missing parts were censored by the authorities of the
People's Court. The editors have not thought fit to publish the
name of the father.)

GERTRUD SEELE was tried before the People's Court in
Potsdam on 6 December 1944, and was sentenced to death.
An amnesty was refused. Her last wish, 1 only want to see
my child once more,' was ignored. The sentence was carried
out at Plotzensee, Berlin.

The events which led up to this death sentence were as
Michaela's guardianship documents show investigated and
established seven years later, through regular court pro-
ceedings.

Gertrud Seele, a talented child from a working-class family
in Berlin, went to a secondary school for two years. On
leaving the elementary school she worked in the Labour
Service and at the age of 18 entered a nursing school. After
completing her training she took a special course in public
health and social welfare service, and finally took up work in
that field. Her daughter Michaela was born on 11 September
1941. In 1942 mother and daughter were evacuated to Merke
Niederlausitz, but returned to Berlin in 1943.

Gertrud's mother, Luise Seele, who has since died, wrote
in a letter dated 27 August 1951 :

'Once at a party in Merke people were complaining about
the Nazis. Gertrud had a healthy sense of justice and fair play,
so she was a passionate opponent of the Nazis, and during the
conversation she expressed her indignation against them in no

uncertain terms. During the war she repeatedly helped Jews
and other persecuted people. And so at a time when other
people were praising Hitler and the Nazis, she developed a
loathing for them. She had left her belongings in Merke and
went there in January to make sure they were all right, having
not the slightest idea that she was in danger. In Merke she was
arrested, taken to an investigation centre in Frankfurt-on-Oder
and later moved to Berlin/

On 22 December 1951, Luise Seele, acting in the interests
of her granddaughter Michaela, submitted an application
under the law passed on 5 January 1951 (giving victims of
the criminal law of the National Socialists the right to claim
compensation) to the Public Prosecutor of the District Court
of Berlin, asking for the cancellation of the previous judg-
ment passed against her daughter by the People's Court. She
wrote at the time: 'The papers concerning the judgment
then passed were handed to the solicitor, but as he cannot
now be traced, I am unable to quote file numbers.'

In a letter dated 15 January 1952, she was informed by the
Public Prosecutor of the District Court : 1 can find no trace
of the case you raise in the court records, and the documents
are no longer available. I must ask you to let me know the
names of all the prisons where your daughter was kept in
connection with the sentence in question. In the light of this
information I will try to find out something about the case/

On 17 October 1952, after painstaking efforts and endless
correspondence the previous sentence was quashed by the
4th Criminal Chamber of the Berlin District Court. The
Court Order recording this decision states : 'Investigations
have shown that the daughter of the applicant was sentenced
because she had made so-called defeatist statements,
designed to undermine the fighting morale of the people/
These remarks, according to the notes of her defence counsel,
formed the basis of the sentence designating her as a 'con-
victed and recognised enemy of the state/ The verdict was
confirmed in communications forwarded by the Public Prose-
cutor to the People's Court and dated 21 November 1944,
and 10 January 1945, respectively, the original texts of which
may be found in the records of the chamber.

It is also confirmed by the duplicate copies of two docu-
ments of the President of the 5th Senate of the People's
Court, dated 20 November 1944. These papers were attached
84

to the records of the court by the defence counsel, Dr Ernst
Falck, together with a convincing supplementary statement
in a letter dated 2 September 1952.

It is thus quite clear that the decision of the former
People's Court was made on purely political grounds.

85

ERNST HEILMANN

13 April 1881-5 April 1940

'THIS case is subject to the personal decision of the Reichs-
fiihrer of the SS/ From 1933 till 1940, this was the inevitable
answer to every effort to mitigate the fate of Ernst Heilmann
as he lay in prison; with this reference to Heinrich Himmler's
order, the Gestapo officials evaded all attempts to avert the
unwritten death sentence which was finally executed in the
seventh year of Heilmann's unparalleled martyrdom.

Before 1933 Heilmann's Social Democrat friends jokingly
called him the 'Uncrowned King of Prussia*. In 1924 they
had elected him chairman of their party group in the Prussian
Diet, of which he had been a member since 1919. This office,
as spokesman and leader of the strongest party in the parlia-
ment of the largest German Land, imposed on its bearer a
large and truly royal measure of responsibility, risk and
influence. Within the legal framework of a modern demo-
cracy, Ernst Heilmann's work can be said to have played a
large part in determining the fate of Prussia.

Heilmann's constructive work, and his influence in the
fruitful years of the coalition of Social Democrats, the
Catholic Centre Party and the Democratic Party, was the
central pillar on which rested the stability of the Prussian
government under Braun and Severing, and indeed in the
days of the so-called 'Little Weimar Coalition , 1924-32,
when Heilmann steered the government through all difficul-
ties and dangers. His success must be attributed to his friend-
ship with the leader of the parliamentary group of the Centre
Party, Dr Hess, to his great intelligence and to his remark-
able political ability.

Ernst Heilmann was the son of middle-class Jewish parents
in Berlin. While he was still a student and before he passed
his law examinations in 1903, he joined the Social Democratic
Party. But in the Royal Prussia of those days, a political
decision of this kind was a bar to the further government-
controlled legal training which was necessary for the final
examinations; so Heilmann had to sacrifice his chosen career
for his political convictions. At first he became a stenographer
86

in Parliament, later a free lance journalist, and finally chief
editor of the Chemnitzer Volksstimme. Later he also edited
Social Democrat information bulletins and periodicals. In
the second year of his war service he lost the sight of his
right eye.

After the first war Ernst Heilmann was one of the most
energetic, and therefore to his totalitarian enemies one of the
best hated, defenders of the young republic in parliament;
he opposed all the revolutionary attempts of the communists:

87

H

iii the parliamentary committee set up to investigate com-
munist disturbance* in central Germany in 1921, in the
M^siuns of the Prussian Diet .where he called them 'moles
trained by Moscow to undermine democracy '), and in all
organisations concerned with attacking the existence of the
democratic state.

The National Socialists found in Hermann's views on
foreign affairs, which were based on understanding with
former enemies, reason enough to consider him their arch-
enemy; and this developed into unbounded hatred for the
influential democratic politician of Jewish origin against
whom they had to contend not only in the Prussian Diet, but
also after '1928 in the Reichstag. In 1933, for all that, Heil-
mann stayed in Berlin. He made this decision, at the risk of
his life, in the conviction that he fought for the greatest cause
in the world; and even after Parliament had been dissolved
and a ban imposed on political parties, he did not want to
leave Germany, although he knew quite well what the future
held in store. Ernst Heilmann's journey through the famous
Gestapo prison Columbiahaus, the Plotzensee Prison, the
concentration camps of Oranienburg, Papenburg-Borger-
moor, Dachau and Buchenwald was even more cruel than
the fate of most of his friends and fellow victims; and, by its
very duration, inflicted on him an ever greater despair.

Walter Poller, author of the report A Doctor's Secretary
at Buchenwald describes among other humiliations how an
SS Officer named Roedl had trained bloodhounds to attack
Heilmann to amuse his guests. The dogs mangled his arms
and hands. Earlier, at Papenburg-Borgermoor, Heilmann had
tried to end his life by pretending to escape and thereby
inciting the guards to shoot, but they only shot him in the
right leg, and what followed was worse than death.

But for all the agony, even though he was disfigured almost
past recognition, Heilmann still proudly acknowledged his
past, by whispering almost imperceptibly 'And still I did
what was right*

He also retained his political judgment. Late in 1938 he
told one of his fellow prisoners (the doctor s secretary at
Buchenwald), "There will be war. You "Aryans" will still have
a chance because they will need you. But they will kill all of
us Jews', and during the first winter in the war he said:
'Germany cannot win this war'.
88

In spring 1940 Ernst Heilmann lay in the camp mortuary,
his body was enveloped in wrapping paper, but brave wit-
nesses discovered that there was a fresh incision near the
veins in the crook of his right arm.

His wife and daughter were among the few who ever
received permission to go to Buchemvald for a last farewell
to their dead husband and father. An SS-Officer read in the
presence of the widow a medical report of the illness which
had, allegedly, led to Heilmann's death, and the report ended
with the words *. . . consequently a clear case of weakness
and old age*.

89

WILLI HAUSSLER

IS April 190722 March 1945

A YOLNG labourer from Hamburg represents thousands of
honest opponents and victims of the Nazi regime. Willi
Haussler was bom on 15 April 1907 in Hamburg, and one
might almost say that he grew up in the Labour movement,
through the influence of his family; he was a member of the
Kinderfreunde and of the Arbeiterjugend before he joined
the Reichsbanner Schicarz-Rot-Gold and the Social Demo-
cratic Partx-, in 1923. He worked for the Hamburg Warehouse
Company, but lost his job in the summer of 1933 because of
his 'hostile attitude towards the state*.

In the Reichsbanner, Willi Haussler belonged to the 10th
Hamburg Defence Company (Bannbek); and in Barmbek
the illegal work of the Hamburg Defence Companies started
in 1933. Political friends in danger, from all parts of
Germany, were helped across the borders; inscriptions
appeared on the walls of houses, in particular the three
arrows of the Eiserne Front, a symbol of the determination
of the workers to fight the Nazi dictatorship; leaflets and
handbills, calling for uncompromising and steadfast resist-
ance to the system of slavery were passed from hand to hand.
One of the handbills read:

'We are not concerned with the elimination of a political
party and the ambitious clique who lead them, much as they
may deserve it; we are concerned with the fate of the whole
German nation, which is once again in danger of being led
into peril by its unscrupulous leaders. Our own future is at
stake . . . The disappointed masses who long to turn away from
Hitler will now find that a new political force is coming into
existence.'

In October 1934 the first wave of arrests hit the men of the
Reichsbanner at Hamburg and about a hundred people in
ten groups were sentenced by the courts; and when, soon
afterwards, the new leaders of the resistance groups of the
Reichsbanner were also arrested, Willi Haussler, without a
moments hesitation, stepped into their place,
90

Frau Mimi Haussler has written the story:

In summer we lived in a little shack in our allotment, outside
the city. A few days before my husband was arrested (13 June
1936) we went to our home in Pestalozzistrasse and were told
by our neighbours that the Gestapo had been in our flat the
night before. After this my husband tried to hide.

The Gestapo came to me night after night to get me to tell
them where they could find him. In fact, my husband had
somehow managed to obtain all necessary documents and
tickets so that he could escape to Denmark. But two hours

91

before his departure he was arrested. The Gestapo ordered me
not to mention to anybody the fact of his arrest or the events
that led to it. But I warned our friends, and some of them were
able to escape.

Our daughter was five years old when all this happened.
Later, at school, the following statement appeared in her file :
'Father detained for political reasons'.

The state Welfare Organisation were prepared to grant
financial aid to Frau Haussler only on condition that she
divorced her husband, and so she was compelled to work for
75 Pfennige per day. The Labour Office also turned her
away when the Director of Personnel learned that her hus-
band was detained on political grounds. Finally, she found a
job as a shop assistant.

Friends who tried to help the families of people who had
been arrested were able for a time to put money under her
door-mat; then the danger involved became too great, and
this too became impossible.

Arrest followed arrest; forty-five people were involved in
the 'Haussler case' in court, and many of them did not live to
see the end of those hard days, but the Nazis never really
succeeded in destroying their solidarity.

On 13 June 1938 Willi Haussler was sentenced to seven
years' imprisonment. One year of the time he had been held
pending investigations was to be deducted. He was
imprisoned first in Hamburg-Fuhlsbiittel, and later at
Bremen-Oslebshausen.

He served his sentence, but he was not released. Instead,
he was sent back to Fuhlsbiittel in 'protective custody*. From
there he was transferred to the camp for foreigners at
Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg.

Frau Haussler writes :

I was able to see my husband only very seldom. While he
was in prison, only every four months. A permit was necessary
for each visit Then I could talk to him for five minutes. In
Fuhlsbiittel and in the camp at Wilhelmsburg I was however
allowed to bring him dean clothes. Two weeks before his death
I saw him for the last time. On recent visits I had secretly pro-
vided him with money, some ration coupons, and identity
papers which somebody had procured for me. Among the
prisoners too it was no secret that the war was nearly over
92

and, should he hear any word of his liquidation', my husband
intended to escape.

The death certificate, which was sent to me, read: TCflled
by enemy action at Wilhelmsburg Camp on 22 March 1945*.
The body was, however, not released for burial, in spite of my
application.

93

HEINRICH JASPER

21 August 187519 February 1945

ON 19 February 1945 Dr Heinrich Jasper was found dead in
the grounds of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by one of
Ms fellow prisoners. At nine o'clock the next morning his
body was thrown on a funeral pyre to be burnt. The day
before, he had been whipped by the notorious Commandant
Kramer. A few months later, in Brunswick, there were many
people who, for all the differences of opinion they had had
with him in the past, were saying : If only Heinrich Jasper
were here ! '

Who then was this man whose powers of leadership were
so clearly recognised?

He was born on 21 August 1875 at Dingelbe, not far from
Brunswick, and was the son of well-to-do parents; he was a
Doctor of Law at the age of twenty-five, practised as a solicitor
and, three years later, became a Social Democrat member of
the municipal council; after the last elections before the first
world war (still under the Dreiklassenwahlrecht], he became
a member of the Landtag of the Duchy of Brunswick.

True to his political convictions, Dr Jasper served as a
private throughout the 1914-18 war. In 1918 the government
of the Duchy of Brunswick, faced with administrative chaos,
asked him to return, and in 1919 he was elected President of
the Landtag by unanimous vote. He was also a member of
the National Assembly at Weimar. From the end of the war
until 1921 and again from 1922-24 and from 1927-30, he led
the Brunswick State Government.

In a speech dedicated to the memory of Heinrich Jasper,
Prof. Dr von Frankenberg said of him :

His unselfishness knew no bounds. Whoever knew him well
knows how strict he was with himself, how unyielding was his
sense of duty, how modest his way of life, almost to the point
of absurdity. The simplicity of his clothing was proverbial, and
he even refused to use a car and went about his official
business by tram and train; for all that, he gave generously
and freely if ever he saw a friend in need, and no-one will ever
know how many people he helped in private. . . .
94

The election of 5 September 1930 brought to Brunswick a
tragic distinction, for it became the second German Land to
have a National Socialist Minister in its government : and
with the coming of Dietrich Klagges, all hell was let loose.
The so-called Machtubernahme (assumption of power) when
the Nazis came in, was, for Heinrich Jasper and for hundreds
of people who thought and felt as he did, the beginning of
fearful suffering and sorrow.

Dr Jasper was arrested in the street and taken to the
Volksfreund building and there, like so many others, terribly
maltreated. At first nobody knew where he was, and Klagges

refused to answer questions: in fact, Jasper had been so
horribly beaten up that his face was hardly recognisable; in
the evening he had collapsed, and the next day slowly
regained consciousness and heard the clocks strike twelve.
For all that time he had lain in the dirt in his own blood.

At pistol point, he was forced to clear up the mess. He was
then taken to another room and asked whether he knew how
to use firearms :

Tfes, of course/

'Well then, we don't want to find you alive when we come
back, otherwise we'll see to it ourselves/ Jasper quite calmly
replied : *You can wait as long as you like, but that is a favour
which I shall not grant you/

That afternoon he was handed over to the county prison
near the Rennelberg; but a few weeks later he was suddenly
released. His political friends then begged him to emigrate
at once, but this was something he would not do. Soon after-
wards he was arrested for the second time.

After two years of solitary confinement, Jasper was taken
to Dachau, and later to Oranienburg. He was kept there for
nearly five years and meanwhile Klagges managed to keep
at bay all attempts to have him released.

But finally, in 1939, he was released. He was not allowed
to resume his practice as a solicitor, and the Gestapo had
taken over the library which he had collected with so much
care and love, and only a few kw books were left. But
Heimich Jasper's mind did not rest, and one could see him
in those days in the Brunswick State Library, bending low
over old records and documents, passionately absorbed in
some scholarly work.

When the end was in sight, in 1943 and 1944, many people
saw in Heinrich Jasper one of their hopes for the reconstruc-
tion of Germany. But this did not escape the men in power,
who saw to it that he too was swept away in the great wave
of arrests that followed 20 July 1944.

On 22 August, the day after his birthday, Jasper was
hauled from his bed and taken to Camp 21, near Hallendorf;
and from there he trod his weary way back to Oranienburg,
and finally on 4 February 1945 on to Bergen-Belsen. A fort-
night later the flames of the funeral pyre completed the story.

96

HANS SCHIFTAN

8 December 18993 November 1941

Office of the

Secret State Police

-IVC2-H.-Nr.Scfc.9788-

BerUn SW 11

Prinz Mbrecht Strasse 8

22 May 1941

Order of Protective Custody

Surname, Christian name: Schiftan, Hans
Date and Place of Birth: 8 December 1899, Schoneberg
Profession: Clerk
Marital Status: Married
Citizenship: German
Religious Denomination: None
Race: (to be mentioned in cases of Non-Aryans)
Place of Residence: Berlin Neukolln, Zietenstrasse 27
is taken into protective custory.
Reasons:

Information obtained by the State Police reveals that his con-
duct is such as to constitute a danger to the nation and to

public security, because his political record leads to the belief
that he would, after serving a two-year sentence for plotting
high treason, again take part in activities of a Marxist character.

Signed: HEYDBICH Witnessed: ROTTAN

HANS SCHIFTAN married at the age of 26, while he was
working in a radio business, for thanks to hard work and his
own ability he had already achieved independence and a
middle-class standard of living. His youngest daughter has
described his fate :

We had a happy family life, gay and carefree. There were
for instance expeditions in paddle-boats with a huge and
ancient tent, the beginning, for us three children, of long weeks
of delight

But all this stopped with a bang when my father was arrested.
I was only ten years old at the time, and for me it was all rather
incomprehensible, meaningless and painful. But gradually I
began to fit the pieces together and to understand things which,
at that age and at that time, I should never normally have
taken in.

My father was a member of the German Social Democratic
Party. His personal ties to the party were strong, and he was
above all aware of his responsibilities and obligations to his
friends. After 1933 he kept in touch with party friends who had
emigrated to Czechoslovakia; there were secret visits which I
was not to mention to anybody, and he was in fact the key-man
of an underground group on this side of the frontier.

When Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia in 1939, most of
my father s friends were arrested, and his own arrest followed
on 13 April 1939. In the legal proceedings that followed he was
sentenced to two years' imprisonment for plotting high treason.
During those years, and indeed in the years to come, my mother
(although suffering from a disease of the kidneys), looked after
us with incredible energy, courage and love. Then, on 20 April
1941, a telegram came : 'Arriving 8.37 p.m. at Lehrter Station
Father'.

For this last meeting with my father I have to thank a tech-
nical blunder on the part of the Gestapo. Having completed his
sentence, my father was sent home. The order for protective
custod/ by which he was to have been transferred to a concen-
tration camp, as soon as his term of imprisonment was over,
had arrived too late, probably because of the birthday cele-
brations for the Fuhrer which took place that day; and my
father was already on his way home. He was with us from

Sunday night until Tuesday morning. On Monday he took me
to school, because I found it so hard to go at all now that he
was home at last. On Tuesday my mother could no longer stay
away from work, so my father and I were alone together until
he went to report to police headquarters in the Alexanderplatz,
as he had been told to do. He did not want to go, although he
had no premonition of what was in store for him. He would
not allow me to wave good-bye from the window, because he
was afraid I might fall out in my excitement. So I watched
him secretly until he disappeared round the corner. At Police
Headquarters he was immediately arrested again. That was on
22 April 1941.

A month later Hans Schiftan was sent to the Mauthausen
Concentration Camp. On 10 November 1941 his family
received a notice from the camp authorities saying that he
had died from septicaemia on 3 November 1941 in the local
hospital'.

JOHANNA KIRCHNER

24 April 18899 June 1944

JOHANNA KIRCHNER'S life had been ruled by her
readiness to help other people and to stand up for her ideals.
Her daughter tells her story :

She was born on 24 April 1889, and came from an old Social
Democrat family in Frankfurt-am-Main. From the age of 14
she belonged to the Socialist Labour Youth Organisation; and
so from her youth she was bound to the Social Democrat move-
ment, by tradition and experience, and these ties grew all the
stronger when she married Karl Kirchner, a Social Democrat
expert on local government who was much respected in
Frankfurt. My mother worked at his side as press officer at
party and trade union congresses, in party headquarters and,
with particular devotion, for the 'Labour Welfare Organisa-
tion*. She organised a mutual-aid plan under which Frankfurt
families looked after the children of workers who were locked
out during the Ruhr strike, and she was deeply involved in the
scheme for sending German children to Switzerland during the
inflation.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933 my mother continued
with undaunted energy to work for her ideals. She was never
tired of helping people who were arrested, and continually
devised new ways and means of escape. At one point in her
efforts to secure the release of Carlo Mierendorff from Gestapo
hands, she had to go to Geneva. Then it became dear that she
herself could no longer stay in Frankfurt, and she decided to
emigrate to avoid arrest.

Until January 1935, she lived in the Saar, where she took
part in the preparations for the plebiscite, but she then had to
take flight again. She wanted to stay as near as possible to her
beloved Germany, and therefore settled in Forbach, in France,
where she stayed until the war broke out, in very close touch
with the German resistance movement and its struggle against
Hitler. She helped in relief work among German emigrants and
German volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, and in work for
the 'underground' in Germany. TDie Hanna', as she was called,
became a symbol of refuge.

After the outbreak of war she was arrested by the French
Government and interned in a French camp. Members of the
French resistance eventually succeeded in freeing her from
100

the camp at Gurs, but freedom did not last long, for after the
occupation of France the Vichy regime complied with a
demand from the Hitler government for her extradition. In this
she shared the fate of Rudolf Hilferding, a former German
Minister of Finance, and of Rudolf Breitscheid, a former mem-
ber of the Reichstag, who had always worked for Franco-
German understanding, and of many others who held the same
convictions.

On 9 June 1942, the ordeal began which led her through
the inferno of Gestapo interrogations, and in May 1943 the
People's Court sentenced her to ten years' imprisonment. But
at Cottbus prison, where she spent one year of her sentence,

101

she partly recovered from her experiences with the Gestapo,
thanks to the care and friendship of her fellow prisoners, and
in spite of her imprisonment, regained hope and happiness.

Early in 1944, the proceedings against Johanna Kirchner were
re-opened and on 20 April 1944, the Court, with the notorious
Freisler as Presiding Judge, sentenced her to death after a
30 minutes' session.

She received her sentence calmly and with courage, and
spent her last days quietly, confident that the rule of terror
would soon end. Her last letter was strong and brave :

'We have to part now. My love and my blessings will always
be with you and I shall set out on my last journey without fear
or despair. My last wish is that you too will be brave and
undismayed. Don't let yourself be overcome by grief, remember
the words of Goethe : "Stirb und werde".

'Always hold together in love and friendship; it is a great
comfort to me to know that you are united. Thank you for all
you have done for me, I know that circumstances were stronger
than your love. Please, please do not mourn and weep for
me ... Your love and braveness are my great consolation in
my last hours.

'May peace soon unite you in happines ... be happy and be
brave, the future will be better . . /

Pastor Buchholz who saw my mother shortly before her
death, wrote that she had met her cruel fate with rare self-
control and calm, and had kept her dignity and her composure
until the very end, setting an example to us all and revealing
to the full the strength and maturity of her personality and
the greatness of her soul.

Johanna Kirchner was executed at Berlin Plotzensee Prison
on 9 June 1944.

102

WILHELM LEUSCHNER

15 June 188829 September 1944

WILHELM LEUSCHNER grew up at Bayreutli and became
an engraver. At the age 17 he went to Darmstadt, where he
soon proved himself in the trade union movement. He was a

Photograph taken to the Peoples Court
103

member of the Municipal Council of Darmstadt for many
years and of the Landtag of Hessen. He became Minister of
the Interior for Hessen in 1929 and Deputy Chairman of the
German Trade Unions Association in 1932.

The National Socialists will use slander, insult and accusa-
tion in their election campaign, but never serious discussion.
We demand of our leaders and national representatives greater
truthfulness, better morals, and higher intelligence than do
the Nazis or the Communists.

'Our fight is directed just as much against Communists as
against National Socialists, because if they did not split the
vote, National Socialism could not play the part it is now
playing in Germany. We want to reunite all the workers in one
party. Thus we fight against Fascism and against Communism;
and for a strong parliament in the Land of Hesse, and a strong
social democracy/

These were the final words of Wilhelm Leuschner's speech
before the Landtag elections in Hesse on 30 May 1932.

A year later he found himself in the hands of the SA, after
the National Socialists arrested him in the trade union head-
quarters in the course of their occupation of trade union
centres. Before they left the headquarters, Robert Ley, under
cover of an SA Order, questioned every one of those arrested
and gave orders as to what should be done with them. Bruno
Gleitze, who was arrested with Leuschner and detained in
the cellar of the Anti-War Museum in the Parochialstrasse
in Berlin, described how Leuschner was subjected for several
days and nights to the brutalities of the SA, and was then
transferred to a cell in the block next to the executioner's
building at Plotzensee Prison. Quite surprisingly, he was
released again and forced to go with Robert Ley to Geneva
to attend the International Labour Conference, thus giving
some credence to the claim of the German Workers' Front'
to a seat at the conference.

Leuschner did not speak in the Assembly. The General
Secretary of the International Confederation of Trade
Unions, I. H. Oldenbroek, and the Secretary of the European
Regional Organisation, W. Schevenels, still remember how
deeply the delegates were impressed by this T>rave silence',
and needless to say, in the discussions which followed the
meetings, he left no doubt that he had never changed his
views.
104

On his return to Germany, Leuschner knew that the
Gestapo would be waiting for him at the frontier; and two
years in concentration camps were the punishment for the
opinions he had expressed in Geneva.

After his release Leuschner succeeded in taking over the
management of a factory in Berlin. Here he employed almost
exclusively political friends from the trade union movement;
and he used the opportunities offered by extensive business
trips to make contact with old friends and other opponents
of the regime, and to prepare a network of resistance groups
to cover the whole of Germany.

On 20 August 1939 he wrote to a friend abroad : 1 am
afraid there will be war this autumn and that it will last for
years. France and Britain have only recently begun to
prepare themselves for it. Tell our friends there, particularly
Walter Citrine (then General Secretary of the British Trades
Union Council), that we still think as we did before. But we
are quite unable to prevent this disaster: we are the inmates
of a huge prison. To rebel would be suicide, just as surely as
it is suicide for prisoners to revolt against their heavily armed
guards/

During the war Leuschner concentrated on preparations
for the tasks of 'the day after , and in this he worked with all
the trade union groups and with representatives of the
different political views of the past. He co-operated with
Beck in tie plan to overthrow the government before the
catastrophe had reached its height, and helped Goerdeler in
preparations for an interim government which would follow
the overthrow of Hitler, and in which he himself was to
become Vice-Chancellor.

Professor Dr Ludwig Bergstrasser has described meetings
with Leuschner at the time :

When I visited him in Berlin I was surprised at how well
informed he was, and equally surprised to note the intelligence,
calmness and objectivity with which he followed developments
and drew his conclusions. During the war he saw clearly how
far the situation had worsened, and he knew that the war would
mean the end of Hitler's dictatorship and that this end ought
to come soon to avoid unspeakable suffering.

In these reflections he rose above the level of narrow party
opinion if he had not done so long before. Indeed he felt
strongly the need to do so, just as he felt the need to unite

105

all the workers so that the situation in which there were too
many trade unions, with too many divergent aims, would not
arise once more after the collapse of the Hitler Government.
'Although he himself had found his place and career in the
Social Democrat Party, he was convinced that now the disaster
of dictatorship had fallen on Germany, all men of goodwill
who would fight for freedom, honesty and justice must work
together/

Until the very end Leuschner worked with friends who
shared his views to solve the detailed problems of a new
order in society which could be created neither "by the
recipes of a bygone age nor by reviving democracy as it had
been after 1918'.

He was particularly concerned with German youth. Just
before 20 July, when the organisation of a future Labour
Youth Organisation was being discussed, Leuschner insisted
that the educational standard should be improved, that
vocational training should be extended and that the main
task should be to 'educate German youth to be first-class
human beings'.

It was certainly not by chance that one of the people who
worked in Leuschner's factory in Berlin was Hermann
Maass, who had come from the youth movement and had
been secretary of the Association of German Youth Move-
ments until 1933. He too had to pay the final penalty, and so
did another close friend of Leuschner's, Ludwig Schwamb, a
former Councillor of State and an untiring and devoted
negotiator.

Wilhelm Leuschner was a man with a strong instinct for
the essential, and his great aim was to unite all sympathetic
forces for the next step. On his way out to the gallows on
29 September 1944 he made one sign to his friends, a sign
that meant: Unity.

106

BERNHARD LETTERHAUS

10 July 189414 November 1944

BERNHARD LETTERHAUS served his industrial appren-
ticeship in the Rhineland and later attended the Prussian
College for Textile workers. He served in the 1914-18 war and
was awarded the Iron Cross (1st Class). He was severely

Photograph taken in the People's Court

107

wounded towards the end of the war and recovered very
slowly; he made use of this time to continue his education.

During the 1914-18 war, Bernhard Letterhaus decided to
devote himself to the Catholic Labour Organisation. In a
letter dated 4 August 1940 he writes about this decision :

'Profession and calling are interrelated concepts. I was called
to what I have done in the past and I shall be called to what I
have to do in the future. By whom? Christians know their
answer : by God. In the last war my heart heard His voice and
I followed it, and therefore I have no right to be cast down if
my way leads me through shadows. I should lose the struggle
only if I did not follow His voice/

Letterhaus worked for the Association of Christian Textile
Workers from 1921 to 1927 and later found in the Catholic
Workers' Associations a field of activity which strongly
appealed to him. As secretary of the Council of West German
Workers' Associations he had scope not only for administra-
tion, but for educational work. He was much admired as a
teacher of economics, sociology and statistics. He was a
gifted speaker. Heinrich Briining, a former Reichs Chan-
cellor who had been a close friend of Bernhard Letterhaus
for many years, wrote in a letter to Frau Letterhaus on 15
August 1946 :

'I know of nobody who had so many positive qualities as
your husband; the ability calmly to consider the facts of a case
or to decide quickly if necessary; a clear and definite judgment
of other people, accompanied by great kindness; a rare political
instinct; the patience to wait without being stung into some
useless activity; courage in danger and a passion for justice,
honesty and order in his beloved country. Against all intrigues
and incapable of indulging in them himself, he was also quick
to recognise them before they became effective, and knew how
to fight them calmly and surely when they first appeared/

Bernhard Letterhaus was appointed by the Centre Party
first to the Landtag of the Rhineland and then, in 1928, to
the Landtag of Prussia, and he soon saw the danger of
Hitler. At this time he said :

'Should this demagogue ever succeed in becoming leader of
Germany, that would be the beginning of the end, there would
108

certainly be a war as well. We must stem this tide by every
means in our power/

In 1931 as Vice-President of the Catholic Rally in Minister
he spoke almost prophetically of the difficulties to come, and
after 1933 he and his friends worked incessantly to foster
resistance among members of the Catholic Church. Frequent
trips abroad enabled him to keep in touch with representa-
tives of the international labour movement. But these
journeys did not pass unnoticed by the Gestapo, and the
result was endless interrogation.

When Letterhaus was called up for active service in 1939
he used his position in the Wehrmacht High Command,
where he was a Captain in the Defence Department, to
strengthen the resistance forces by giving them information,
his views on the situation, and by using his connections for
their purposes. Soon he was working with leaders of the
resistance movement, and was considered for a post in the
new government.

Bernhard Letterhaus was arrested immediately after the
plot of 20 July 1944. After that he had no news from his wife
and child. He spent the last months of his life helping some
of his friends with whom he had fought and suffered. Undis-
mayed and fearless, a deeply convinced Catholic, he was
sentenced to death in the People's Court on 13 November
1944. The next day he and two Catholic friends were hanged.

Franz Leuninger, a former General Secretary of the
Christian Metal Workers' Union, was also executed shortly
before the end of the war. Heinrich Korner, another colleague
and the former Secretary of the Christian Trade Unions, was
shot in front of Plotzensee Prison on 25 April 1945. With the
help of these men, Jacob Kaiser, later to become a Minister
in the Federal Republic, had brought about the union with
the Social Democratic trade union leaders. Max Habermann
of the Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfenverband was
also a member of the group. After 20 July 1944 Max
Habermann was hidden by friends, but was discovered and
arrested on 30 October 1944. In prison, Habermann com-
mitted suicide because he 'did not want to give away those
who had given him asylum'.

109

4 THE STATE AND
THE LAW

THE burning of the Reichstag, four weeks after the National
Socialists came to power, was their first major act of violence.
It was represented as a Communist plot, in an attempt to
rally the people to the new rulers by producing a common
enemy; and it was used as a pretext for the persecution of
large numbers of leading citizens. The Chief of the Berlin
Fire Brigade was the first of the experts to question the
theory of Communist arson. He was retired from his post at
short notice and later 'removed' as a troublesome witness.
There were many similar cases.

The National Socialists' concern to preserve the legal
fagade, to transform democracy into dictatorship by osten-
sibly lawful means, was evident with each move. New laws
were made as and when necessary, bogus democratic resolu-
tions were produced, national crises were staged and
exploited, always in a manner calculated to show that the
law was on the side of the authorities. Thus the 'Enabling Act'
was wrested from the Reichstag against the background of a
wave of terror: the debating chamber was filled and
surrounded by SS and SA units and Hitler was prepared to
have as many deputies arrested as was necessary to ensure
the two-thirds majority. Soon after this the 'Law concerning
the Re-instatement of the Professionally-trained Civil Ser-
vice' was applied to secure the dismissal of all politically
tiresome or non-aryan civil servants who, in view of their
previous political activities, do not appear to be strong
supporters of the National Socialist state . As time went on,
politicians who were not Nazis lost all influence and even the
'Enabling Act', though it delegated almost unlimited power to
Hitler, was overstepped and, like the Weimar Constitution,
sank into oblivion.

There remained the President of Germany, the highest
authority, constitutionally elected, who stood between the
nation and extreme arbitrary power. But he was old and ill
and had retired to his estate in East Prussia. He was cut off
110

from political life and surrounded by devoted servants of the
Fuhrer. At first, his very existence was an asset to the Third
Reich, but he soon ceased to count. By the time he died, in
1934, the mass arrests and the arbitrary shootings had made
it plain to everyone that the law had become Hitler's tool
and plaything. The abuse of the law continued, and the
climax came when members of the armed services and civil
servants were ordered to swear the Oath of Allegiance to
Hitler : this oath, taking the name of the Lord in vain, put
them in the position where they were technically breaking
the law each time they opposed Hitler or his policies, and
was as wicked as it was unconstitutional. The figure of the
raging Freisler, the Nazi judge who finally presided over the
highest court in Germany, became the incarnation of the
lawless state.

Many people, either voluntarily or under duress, accepted
the new order. But there were others who did not, who
deplored the growing confusion between tyranny and justice
and for whom conscience, and not the law, became the deter-
mining factor. Most of them did not find it easy to take the
law into their own hands, but they died in the conviction
that Hitler, by subjecting the law to the state, had shaken to
its foundations the common life of the people.

Ill

WALTER GEMPP

13 September 18782 May 1939

AFTER his matriculation Walter Gempp studied mechanical
and electrical engineering at the Technische Hoclischule in
Karlsruhe (Baden) and also had some practical engineering
experience. He obtained his diploma and then worked
for three years as a designer with Siemens-Schuckert in
Berlin. In 1906 he was entrusted with the expansion of the
Berlin Fire Brigade and was in particular concerned with the
experimental branch of the mobile detachment. The first
motorised unit was put into service in 1908, in the station in
the Schonlanker Strasse, and by 1914 there were eleven
more motorised fire brigade units of the same type. Gempp
was later promoted to Technical Director and in 1923 was
appointed Chief of the Berlin Fire Service. In this capacity
he further contributed to the expansion and general organisa-
tion of the Berlin Fire Brigade and to the spirit of co-
operation within its ranks.

With the burning of the Reichstag on 27 February 1933,
Gempp, who had a high reputation both in Germany and
abroad and was respected as an excellent engineer and a
loyal civil servant, was confronted with a situation which
was to prove decisive for his life and work. For well over a
quarter of a century he had been working to perfect the
instrument which on that notable occasion so ably stood the
test. But this fire was more than a technical problem. It was
a political event. The circumstances of the alarm, the manner
of the immediate enquiries and above all the subsequent
political persecutions which were launched all over Germany,
only a few days before the Reichstag elections of 5 March,
made this clear. And Gempp was not only a technical expert
and an able civil servant, he was also a man of conscience
and integrity. All this led him, at a meeting of the fire
brigade inspectors and officers, to correct the official reports.
He stated that the Fire Brigade had been warned too late
and had met Storm Troopers at the scene of the fire; and
moreover that the acting Minister of the Interior, Goring,
had at first expressly forbidden him either to call in all
112

available help or to make full use of the firemen at his
disposal; and finally that enough fire-raising material to fill
a lorry had been found in the undamaged rooms of the.
closely cordoned building; facts which aU went to disprove
the theory of communist arson. Thus Gempp became a
troublesome witness of the terrorist tactics used by the
National Socialists, for whom the burning of the Reichstag
was only a prelude to the suppression and removal of all their
political enemies.

Photo from Ulktetn Archives

Four weeks later, Walter Gempp fell victim to the purge
which was carried through under cover of a so-called reform
of the civil service. Although Hindenburg, the President of
Germany, had repeatedly acknowledged his confidence in
him and even Hitler, shortly before the incident, had
expressed his particular thanks and warm appreciation for
his 'conscientious leadership*, Gempp, a member of the
Democratic Party, was now accused of 'marxist and com-
munist subversive and inflammatory activities' and of passing
over 'national-minded Fire Service officials'.

There was great consternation. The Vossische Zeitung
wrote on 25 March 1933 :

113

The motives of the State Commissioner in suspending the
invaluable Chief of the Berlin Fire Brigade, who has been in
the service of the city for 27 years, are not known. What is well
known is the fact that Gempp, who is 55, has made the Berlin
Fire Brigade the protector of the Berlin people. Thousands of
foreigners have studied the Berlin fire system with envy and
have recognised and appreciated his work . . ."

Gempp repeated his statements during the Reichstag Trial,
which lasted from September to December 1933.

But even his final discharge did not satisfy the new
dictators, and there followed defamation of the worst kind,
cross examinations and arrest. Finally, in September 1937,
he was again committed for trial. Carefully planned
proceedings accusing him of so-called official malpractice
resulted in his conviction, against which, with the support of
outside lawyers, he appealed. On 2 May 1939, shortly before
the beginning of the new trial, Walter Gempp was found
dead in his cell. He had been strangled.

114

MARTIN GAUGER

4 August 190514 July 1941

MARTIN GAUGER, fourth son in the large family of a parson
in Wuppertal, was unusually gifted, Ml of vitality, critical
and fully aware of the problems of his day. Even as a student
he was moved and worried by the social cleavages in
Germany; in his own immediate circle in the Boberhaus he
tried to do something about the problem by organising the
first voluntary labour camps where workers and students (of
Professor Rosenstock of Breslau) worked together. From this
there developed his friendship with the Kreisau circle,
particularly with Helmuth von Moltke and Carl Dietrich von
Trotha. It was there that he found the courage to believe in
himself and came to the conclusion that every man can
fashion his own life and that each must exert his influence in
public affairs. He studied political economy and law and also
spent some time at the London School of Economics, finally
emerging with a Diploma in Political Economy, success in
his law finals and the degree of Doctor of Law.

In 1934 he became an assessor in the office of the public
prosecutor in Miinchen-Gladbach. With his gifts, his educa-
tion, his humour and his ability to get on well with people,
his future looked promising. But he saw clearly what was
going on around him. He witnessed the unjust removal of his
father from his post (as an editor) and the imprisonment
which followed, and he suffered under the increasing law-
lessness of the Nazi dictatorship. The official explanation
given by the Minister of Justice after the murders on 30 June
1934 deeply horrified him, and he thereupon refused to
submit to the demand that all officials should swear an Oath
of Allegiance to Hitler. As a lawyer he realised the full
implications of the oath, and his conscience forbade him to
take it.

For this reason he left the civil service. Sometime later
he became legal adviser with the provisional administra-
tion of the German Protestant Church and then with the
Lutheran Council in Berlin. Here, guided by Christian
ethics, he learnt where his task lay; and with no thought

115

for his own life did what was humanly possible to help
members of the clergy in their struggle with the authorities.
His greatest joy was the release of seven pastors from Liibeck
from a concentration camp, which was largely his own

doing.

In his opposition to the Nazi regime he was above all con-
cerned to protect die Church and to enable it to survive the
Third Reich. He devoted his energy to this arduous task,
although he fully realised that we are regarded by the
authorities as enemies of the state. That leaves us undis-
mayed, because we have a clear conscience and good grounds
for believing that it is we who are in fact the patriots/

Martin Gauger wrote these words in a letter in 1938. In
the same year he turned down the offer of a professorship at
the Christian College of Madras, India, explaining : 'So long
as it is possible for me to work at all, I cannot run away from
my post here/

As well as numerous articles in the Protestant weekly,
Licht und Leben, and in the Gotthard-letters, he wrote in the
years before the war Notes on the Rights of the Protestant
Press in Germany and the pamphlets, Confession and Church
Policy (Wuppertal, 1936). Both books were immediately con-
fiscated by the Gestapo. When the war began, Gauger was
offered a job with the Red Cross in Geneva. But, true to his
own work, he again refused. Then in April 1940 he was called
up. At this time he wrote :

Tor a time I thought I could bear this war if I did not have
to serve as a soldier myself, but that is taking a very false and
narrow view, and a view that is essentially cowardly. I now
believe that one should not serve in the war at all, certainly not
in this war, because it is not a defensive war ... for a time I
thought the answer was a job on the supply side, when at least
I would not have to serve at the front. But then I asked myself:
Why? Is there any difference between actually fighting and
equipping and supplying those who are fighting? No. There's
no difference at all. And I cannot and will not support this war
or help to spread this sea of blood and tears to other countries.

This was his answer when friends tried to give him a way
out by offering him an administrative job. He still felt unable
to take the Oath of Allegiance to Hitler, but his refusal
endangered his work, his family and himself.
116

Gauger finally decided to flee to Holland and early in May
1940 he swam across the icy waters of the Rhine. But soon
after he crossed the frontier into neutral territory, Hitler's
SS troops marched in. Gauger was seriously wounded and
then captured, and after passing through several prisons
ended up in the civil jail in Diisseldorf . There he spent one
year, while his case was investigated by the Gestapo. In

117

June 1941 he was transferred to Buchenwald concentration
camp. One night when he and ninety other prisoners were
taken away under special security precautions, he knew that
his end had come.

118

HANS von DOHNANYI

1 January 19028 April 1945

INSTIGATOR and guiding spirit of the movement to
eliminate the Fuhref : thus the Gestapo described Dohnanyi
after the investigation into the events of 20 July 1944 had
revealed the part he had played for many years in the plans
to overthrow the Hitler regime.

After his arrest the Gestapo took special precautions, of
which there is evidence in the memoirs of Harald Poelchau :

'It must have been in July or August 1944. 1 had taken over
temporary duties at the Military Prison Hospital at Buch, and
enquired which of the prisoners had registered for visits by
the Chaplain of the garrison. A number of names were men-
tioned and then, with slight hesitation, they said :

"A Colonel Z has also registered."

"Colonel Z? Who is that?"

"We don't know either."

'When I was alone with Colonel Z and introduced myself, he
said : "I know about you, I am Dohnanyi."

'Physically, he was suffering, but he was quite composed, a
man of strength and personality for whom I could do very
little.'

Dohnanyi was born on 1 January 1902 in Vienna and grew
up in close contact with the Bonhoeffer, Delbriick and
Harnack families. After he had taken his law examinations in
1929 he obtained a post in the Reich Ministry of Justice,
worked in the Departments of International, Constitutional
and Administrative Law, which also dealt with questions of
High Treason, and was later private secretary to several
Ministers of Justice. This position gave him an early insight
into the true character of National Socialism. Already under
Bribing, whom he had got to know while attending cabinet
meetings as a young legal adviser, he argued that the
nationalist radicals should be strictly forbidden to wear
uniform.

After the Reichstag fire Dohnanyi tried to organise a
public inquiry by the German judges into the growing rule

119

of terror. But his appeal to the President of the Supreme
Court of the Reich met with no success. In discussions with
Reich Minister of Justice, Gurtner, in particular on the
occasion of the Reiclistag fire, Dohnanyi left no doubt as to
his views. In spite of this he became head of the Minister's
private office and thus saw even more of the working of the
government machinery, and made many important contacts.
He constantly used his connections with people in public
life to work for the protection of the persecuted, but he
realised after many useless onslaughts at the highest level,
the futility of all legal protests against the system of con-
centration camps. And so he decided on active resistance.

As early as 1933, Dohnanyi began to keep a secret record
of crimes committed by the Nazi regime and of those who
were responsible for diem. The material for this record,
which was to be used and published when the day of reckon-
ing with Hitler s dictatorship arrived, came from the secret
files of the Ministry of Justice.

Soon Dohnanyi became the pivot of various civilian resist-
ance groups. By reason of his position in Giirtner's office he
was always well informed on what went on in government
circles, and he came into close touch with Popitz and
Goerdeler. The unwavering courage with which he faced the
powerful party leaders also enabled him for five years to
scotch the constant intrigues of Freisler, at that time
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Justice, even though
he was not a member of the Rechtswahrerbund ('The Asso-
ciation of the Guardians of Justice', a Nazi organisation for
members of the legal profession). During the trial of General
Fritsch, Dohnanyi got to know Beck and Oster, who held a
key position under Canaris in the Military Intelligence
Service. This friendship was of vital importance in all sub-
sequent planning.

Dohnanyf s position, in view of the fact that he was not
a National Socialist, was soon 'not acceptable', and Gurtner,
under pressure from Freisler and Bormann was finally forced
to post him as Reichsgerichtsrat to the Supreme Court at
Leipzig. But Dohnanyi managed to continue weaving his
web, even after a plot against Hitler had failed in 1938,
because his duties frequently took him to Berlin. When war
broke out Beck saw to it that Dohnanyi went to Canaris'
staff in Military Intelligence, and there he worked in Oster's
120

department as head of the Office of Political Affairs. The plan
to end the war during the winter of 1939-40 was largely the
result of his illegal work in the Military Intelligence Service;
as intermediary between Beck and Leuschner he helped to
synchronise resistance activities, and no less important were

121

the negotiations with the Vatican which he opened through
Josef Muller. Their result a clear offer of peace was sub-
mitted to the leading generals, before the victorious French
campaign wrecked the project. But Dohnanyi continued his
effort. In March 1943 he flew to the headquarters of the
Middle Army Group on the eastern front to co-ordinate the
plans for Hitler's assassination worked out by Tresckow and
Schlabrendorff with the political preparations in Berlin; but
this plan also went awry when the bomb in Hitler's plane
failed to explode.

On 5 April 1943 Dohnanyi, Josef Muller and Dietrich
Bonhoeffer were arrested, quite unexpectedly. One of their
agents had indulged in irregular currency transactions and
so drawn attention to Oster's staff; and this at last gave
Himmler's Security Service the pretext to intervene in the
affairs of the otherwise independent Military Intelligence
Service. Persistent questioning, to which Dohnanyi was then
subjected, completely failed to produce any conclusive
evidence of the suspected resistance activities in the Military
Intelligence Service; but one of the main centres of the con-
spirators had been destroyed.

After 20 July 1944 Dohnanyf s past role could no longer
be disguised, but with all his legal experience he was able to
put up a steadfast and skilful defence which defeated all
attempts of the Gestapo to prove his guilt, although they left
no stone unturned. TTiere were therefore no legal proceed-
ings, and no conviction.

Dohnanyi is believed to have died on 8 April 1945 in
Sachsenhausen concentration camp, but no-one knows
exactly what happened.

122

MARIA TERWIEL

7 June 19105 August 1943

MARIA TERWIEL was the daughter of a senior civil servant
and was born at Boppard. She passed her matriculation in
1929 and, as was her great wish, studied law.

Her mother was or Jewish descent and consequently the
Nuremberg Laws of 1935, against the Jews, made it impos-
sible for Maria to take a university examination, and she
finally had to abandon her law studies. Her father, a Social

Democrat and a Roman Catholic, was dismissed from his
office at Stettin in 1933 and took his family to Berlin. There
Maria found work as a secretary in a Swiss textile factory.

When war broke out she shrewdly managed to obtain
permission for a French director of the firm, then treated as a
prisoner of war, to carry out his compulsory labour with his
own old firm.

Later, when the opportunity came her way, she made
contact with Captain Schulze-Boysen's group and used it to
distribute copies of Bishop von Galen's sermons and to
provide Jews in danger of persecution with passports.

She was sentenced to death by the Reiehskriegsgericht in
January 1943, together with her fianc, Helmut Himpel. The
sentence was carried out on 5 August 1943. Maria Terwiel
died a convinced Catholic. Her father had died a year before,
and her mother and brother were killed in an air-raid on 17
December 1943.

Maria Terwiel, the girl whose wish to follow the legal pro-
fession had been denied her, worked up to the end as the
secret advocate of those who had been outlawed by the
Nazis. A Polish girl, of whom we know only that she was sent
from Moabit to the Leipzig prison for women, talked of her
in a letter, which found its way to Maria Terwiel's family.

Berlin-Moabit, 15 September, 1943

'. . . Meeting her for the first time, one could not guess the
depth of feeling which lay behind her clear and honest features.
Only her eyes spoke for themselves.

'She had been alone in the cell until I joined her there. At
first we were all very closely guarded and watched. There was
always an SS-man outside in the corridor, who looked through
the spy-hole every other minute, and the lights were on all
night. All this was intended to frustrate any attempt to commit
suicide. Maria could not sleep, her bed was full of vermin, she
kept pacing up and down the cell. During the daytime she did
piano exercises on a piece of wood and stood at the window for
hours whistling all kinds of tunes. One day I was pushed into
her cell by a female guard, and she at once took me under her
protection.

'At that time I was a newcomer to the prison, straight from
Warsaw. I was separated from my Polish friends for the first
time, afraid, and very near to tears. But with Maria a stiff
upper lip was the order of the day.

'At first she did not think that a death sentence was in store
124

for her. Only with time and experience no more news, except
of new death sentences; after a retrospective law came out and
all the other girls, Cato Bantjes van Beek, Eva Buch and the
rest, were given death sentences only then did we understand
that there was also no hope for us.

Then Maria became very restless, she worried about
Helmut . . . Before the Gestapo she tried to take all blame on
herself. Of course Helmut did the same thing!

'We were both hungry and cold and shared the narrow bed.
During those endless winter evenings Maria whistled her most
beautiful melodies for me and I had to tell her Polish fairy
tales. Of course I could do that only very slowly and haltingly
because I knew so little German. Later, in January, came the
days when Maria went into Court, while her case was heard.
Outwardly she was completely calm and showed much courage
and composure. When the police brought her back to the
prison after she had received her death sentence I thought at
first all had gone well at the door of the cell she was still
talking to the guards with a smile. I could hardly believe it
when she told me that she and Helmut . . .

'After the death sentence we stayed together for two more
weeks, then I was sent to Moabit and Maria shared a cell with
another Polish girl with the same name as mine, Christina
Katowiz. The other Christina and Maria got on very well too
and Maria saved her life because she told Christina again and
again that she should admit nothing. That she did, and instead
of being brought up before the Court, with the certainty of a
death sentence, she was sent to a camp. Not only I and the
other Christina, but also many other Polish girls will never
forget Maria. She was always willing to help and she wrote the
petitions for pardon for many of us, first of course for me. She
often said: 'It is a pity that I could not defend you in court.
You know I could have done very well ! " When I saw her again
in Moabit, in the rest hour, my heart leapt for joy. We tried
at once to get together again but it could not be arranged. The
Court had ruled that Maria was to be kept in solitary confine-
ment and on top of that I, being a Pole, was not allowed to
share a room with her.

'Here at Moabit her health began to fail and she really
needed a nurse. At first she had a rash on her back and could
not endure wearing the prison clothing. We made a little slip
for her from my pillow case, which was much softer and more
comfortable. Later she often could not digest the soup we had
for lunch, after a few spoonfuls she had pains and was sick.
But the worst thing was her finger. She suffered so much that

125

she could not sleep at night and kept walking up and down her
cell. I don't know how she managed to dress and undress, wash
and comb her hair. She could only write with her left hand in
quaint clumsy little letters. She said that by her finger she
had atoned for her sins of next year, and tried bravely to smile
when we met in our free time. I would have given so much
to be able to help her. Months spent together in prison bind
people together more closely than long years of freedom . . .

"I have seen so many splendid people die that I wondered
after Helmut's and Maria's death, whether there were any left.

'With all my kindest regards,

Yours,

CHRISTINE/

[I have absolutely no fear of death and certainly none of
heavenly justice; that at least we don't have to fear.
'Stay true to your principles and always stick together.

Your sister MARIA.

From the last will of Maria Terwiel, dated 29 January, 1943.]

128

ERNST von HARNACK

15 July 18883 March 1945

ERNST VON HARNACK was the son of Adolf von Harnack,
a religious historian. He grew up in Berlin, studied in Mar-
burg and Berlin and fought in the 1914-18 war.

After passing his law examinations, he worked in the
Prussian Ministry of Education, in the Land administration
in Hersfeld, as Vice-President of the administrative Council
of Hanover and Cologne, and as President of the Council in
Merseburg. From 1919 onwards he was a member of the
Social Democratic Party. The steps taken by von Papen
against Prussia led to von Harnack's temporary retirement,
and Hitler's re-organisation of the civil service in 1933
brought about his final discharge. Finally his efforts to
instigate enquiries into the murder of Stalling, after a night
of slaughter in Kopenick, landed him in prison for a few
weeks, for the first time but not for the last.

Fundamentally, Ernst von Harnack was a man of a gay,
frank and optimistic temperament, full of vitality and
remarkably gifted; the trait which his sister Elisabeth parti-
cularly mentions was his strong sense of justice, which
inevitably led him to side with the oppressed and under-
privileged. Oblivious to public opinion or personal safety, he
was guided in all the important decisions of his life by his
Protestant faith, and answerable only to God and to his own
conscience.

The Prussian administration had become part of his life,
and when he was forced into premature retirement he felt
the urge to write of his experiences in the profession he
loved. In his book The Practice of Public Administration
(1936) he brought to light in his own inimitable style the
inner workings of the administrative machine, so much so
that the book was banned immediately on publication.

Although a civil servant by inclination and truly devoted
to his work, Harnack had about him little of the typical
government official. He was too much of an individualist for
that, and because of his artistic interests and talents, which
he indulged and developed all his life, he was at home in

127

many other settings. There was in particular his love of
music. As a schoolboy he founded an orchestra, he played
the flute very well indeed and was well versed in the history
of music, as in the history of literature and art. He had
learned bookbinding, his drawing was a delight, and his skill
in other arts and crafts were a source of much pleasure to Eis
children and his friends.

Von Harnack was by nature gregarious, in fact social life
in all its manifestations, small talk, anecdote, conversation
and argument, was for him an almost passionate necessity.
His natural sympathy gave him an intense interest in the
personal fate of his friends and acquaintances, and indeed
in their practical problems and decisions; and of course in
current political and religious questions. But politics were
his burning interest, and the conversations which really
attracted bin were those whereby he might clarify his own
mind about motives, aims, relationships and behaviour; and
this whether he was concerned, often at the risk of his life,
in helping the persecuted and the pursued, or in saving their
possessions, or whether he was engaged in resisting the
government without goodness or grace*, as he called the
Hitler regime. This he did both openly and in secret, but
often, as both his sons were at the front, with a heavy heart.

Hendrik de Man s daughter tells of a visit which she and
her husband paid to Harnack in the winter of 1941-42, and
of his efforts to establish contacts abroad :

'We met in a big room on the first floor. Its tall windows
looked on to an inner courtyard which lay silent and mysterious
in the half-light of a November afternoon. The room looked
rather like an artist's studio, and the furniture bore silent
witness to the break between the past life of its owner, and
the present.

*Ernst von Harnack, aristocrat, former government official,
Socialist, had lost his high position through the Hitler regime
and was now working as a traveller for a cloth factory, but the
war had so seriously restricted the textile market that he was
looking for another job. In the second year of the war he found
a most unusual one. Under instructions from the Berlin City
Council he had to draw up lists of the graves of famous men
which were scattered over the cemeteries of the city.

Trom the very start it was evident that Ernst von Harnack
had no illusions about our attitude to the German political
leaders of the time. He spoke quite openly, although with some

caution. The purpose of our visits to his office or to his lovely
house could always be concealed under the pretext of our
common love of music, and his collegium musicum, as he called
it, provided excellent cover for his dealings with people "not in
step" with the regime.

To questions about the dangers of the secret resistance work
he gave a reply worth recording : I asked him if the Gestapo,

129

with whom we were just beginning to come to grips in Belgium,
did not make the whole illegal business very difficult.

'Ernst von Harnack replied with a smile : "Since the German
armies occupied most of Europe, they have gone away from
here, and we have some peace at last". And it was a fact that
the police vice which had gripped Germany so tightly since
1933 was by 1941 much looser. Perhaps the brown-shirted rulers
thought that military success would suffice to remove all
thought of a plot against them.

'But Ernst von Harnack saw further than the rulers. I
remember in particular two of his lines of thought :

'"The most important thing is," he said to me, "that the
regime should be destroyed at one fell swoop, rather as one
opens a zip-fastener. All preparations must be completed in
advance, so that there is no danger of a general demoralisation
of the nation. That is the reason why this slow work of under-
mining is so important. The opposition must spin their web
through the whole machinery of the regime, and at the same
time try to make contact abroad."

'Ernst von Harnack undertook the important task of inform-
ing countries abroad, and particularly Belgium, at that time a
political backwater, about the secret forces working to bring
about the downfall of the Hitler r6gime. He therefore wanted
without mentioning names of otter conspirators, to give
Hendrik de Man some idea of the nature of the resistance.

'As soon as we returned to Brussels, in March 1942, I lost
no time in giving my father an exact report. He was very
interested indeed and impressed upon me the need for secrecy,
saying I must tell no-one else about these conversations. It is a
strange thing that barely a fortnight later, he heard of similar
plans from a former S.P.D. member of the Reichstag, Carlo
Mierendorff, whom he met in Paris/

Two years later things began to move. Von Harnack had
been away from Berlin on business and returned just after
20 July 1944. Although he must have known of his peril, and
although relations and friends tried to persuade him to hide
in some out-of-the-way place, he remained in Berlin and in
the next few days tried with the help of the Catholic Church
to find the children of his friend Julius Leber, who had been
arrested in accordance with the Nazi practice of punishing
not only the man, but his family as well.

On 1 February 1945 the People's Court sentenced von
Harnack to death, and the sentence was carried out on
130

3 March. In the weeks before his death, he remarked to
another political prisoner : 'The most important thing is not
to achieve one's end, but to find the right means for the
attempt'.

A silhouette torn from black-out paper with the point of c

nail one of von Harnack's occupations between his trial

and his death.

181

FRITZ ELSAS

11 July 18904 January 1945

FRITZ ELSAS, the son of a factory owner, was born at
Cannstatt in Wiirttemberg. After his matriculation he
studied law, and soon made a name for himself by his
untiring work in public administration.

Conspiracy was alien to his character, for he was a man
who dealt in sober and concrete terms. Not that he lacked
political enthusiasm, and family tradition alone had brought
him in contact with the democratic circles in Swabia (where
he grew up) at an early stage in his life; but he had no
political ambition, and was more concerned to see order
resulting from good administration and the inviolability of
justice in the state. His boyhood dreams had been academic,
and he never abandoned them. He was first legal adviser to
the City of Stuttgart, became President of the Deutscher
Stadtetag (Association of Municipal Councils) in 1926, at the
early age of 36, and then Mayor of Berlin in 1931, but in
addition to his official tasks he still continued important
research work on economic and social aspects of municipal
policy.

The year 1933 wrecked his career in public life because of
his Jewish descent. But five years in the Stadtetag had won
him respect in political circles of both Left and Right, and
also much personal friendship and confidence. Many who
waited for a turn of the tide in politics always remembered
him, and so in the long years of darkness were comforted by
the hope that plans and drafts prepared for the future would
yet come into their own. He had no illusions about the
dangers that threatened his own life. Several months of
imprisonment in 1937 (for giving legal advice to emigrants)
had been intended to bring him to heel. That had not
worked, and there were still independent judges in Berlin . . .
but for how long would this be the case? He was arrested
for the second time in August 1944. A few months later
friends found in his empty house (his family had already
been taken away into Sippenhaft, preventive custody of
family members) a note among his papers that had escaped
132 *

the careless search made by the Gestapo. This note was to
tell his wife to whom she should turn after he had disap-
peared: the names were Goerdeler, Popitz, Zarden and
Heuss.

Theodor Heuss, who with Eberhard Wildermuth had
formed the nucleus of an intimate circle in Swabia, occa-
sionally tells of his last talks with Fritz Elsas in Berlin. Heuss
himself had moved to the south of Germany in August 1943.
He tells how after a talk with Goerdeler, he asked Elsas,
whom he knew to be a close friend of Goerdeler's, whether

133

Goerdeler might not be persuaded to go about his business
rather more quietly. He had then discussed Goerdeler's plans
with this man whom he hardly knew, but who was as honest
as he was un-political; and finally Elsas had laughed and
said: 'Perhaps you are right. But a noiseless motor has not
yet been invented and Goerdeler is the motor that drives
all who hesitate/ There was nothing more to be said.

After the failure of the plot of 20 July 1944 Karl Goerdeler
came to Elsas's house in Patschkauer Weg, Berlin-Dahlem,
where he had so often been before. It is hardly likely that his
coming was as happy as it used to be, but since he was
actually there he found a friendly reception, on 27 July and
again on 31 July anything else would have been quite con-
trary to Elsas' nature. The community of thought between
him and Goerdeler had always spelt danger, and did so all
the more at this critical juncture. Frau Elsas said later that
they had been Very careless and on one occasion walked in
the garden . People who are really made for conspiracy
would probably take more care. In any case it is assumed
that Goerdeler was recognised by someone in the neighbour-
hood on this occasion. That meant that the fate of Fritz Elsas
was also sealed.

His case never went before a court. Apparently all the
maltreatment and questioning failed to reveal any substan-
tial evidence against him which could have been used in
court, and although he could on occasion lose his temper, it
was always in such critical moments well under control. It
was apparently impossible to accuse someone of Jewish
descent of so noble a sentiment as Tiuman loyalty'.

He never knew that his whole family was in Sipperihaft.
Late in October he succeeded in smuggling a letter out of
the Gestapo prison in Lehrter Strasse, but friends who
entered his deserted house found it in the letter-box. No one
knows who had brought it there. He wrote this letter with
great effort, left handed, *but the abscesses on my right hand
[probably the result of torture] are healing*. There were
questions about this and that, how was the garden getting
on and was there enough coal in the house? He wished his
family 'strength and health to master everyday life'. And
then come the reflections : 'Time will always put new and
unknown claims on different men in turn. Holderlin's letters
to Diotima show how man can gain strength in spite of
134

suffering and need. So even suffering in love is a source of
strength'. But his words never reached their destination.

Late in December Fritz Elsas was transferred to Sachsen-
hausen. Once, he was taken to Berlin for one day to be
questioned again. In accordance with 'simplified procedure'
he was shot by the SS on 4 January 1945 in the so-called
Industriehof at Sachsenhausen.

135

JOSEPH WIRMER

19 March 19018 September 1944

DURING his trial before the People's Court, Joseph Winner
made one remark which is in itself proof of his courage and
confidence : 'If I am hanged, Herr President,' he said, 'then
you will be the one who is afraid, not I.'

His confidence was unaffected by his gamble with death,
and he was absolute master of the situation. In character as
in appearance, he was upright and forceful . . . and so the
natural enemy, of National Socialism. On 1 May 1933 he
heard the broadcast of Hitler s speech at the Tempelhofer
Feld, among friends who were all too easily carried away;
and announced with religious solemnity : 1 shall be Hitler's
enemy/ The hour in which this enmity was born was in fact
the hour of Hitler's first public appearance after he came to
power, and at that moment Winner understood the nature
of his enemy and knew that he must oppose the anti-Christ,
if necessary at the risk of his life. He saw from the start that
Hitler threatened the ethics, the Christianity and the culture
which were part of his own being, the basis of his life as man,
as a father, as a responsible citizen and as a member of the
legal profession.

Of Winner's sense of justice his brother Otto has written :

'He believed he could best retain his independence in the
practice of his profession as a solicitor, although the rigid rules
and regulations were an anathema to him and an outrage to his
feeling for individual responsibility. For all his legal training
and inclination, he regarded laws which took no account of
facts or circumstances as so much nonsense; the thesis autoritas
non veritas factt legevri, he dismissed as Jesus dismissed the
tempter in the desert, and he was in the end deeply convinced
that law must emerge from the order established by historical
evolution, and must itself and by that virtue continually evolve.
He thus believed that by defeating the formal law introduced
by a dictatorship he was in fact serving on a much higher
plane the cause of justice to which he had dedicated his life.
The fact that Freisler attacked him with particular venom was
a sure sign that the regime regarded him as one of its most
dangerous enemies, and therefore as one to be eliminated Just
136

Photograph taken in the People's Court

as they had thrown him out of the Rechtswahrerbund (a Nazi
organisation for members of the legal profession), years before,
for his fearless defence of victims of racial persecution/
* * *

'My brother Joseph had got to know Karl Goerdeler through
Jakob Kaiser, now a Minister in the Federal Republic. I
remember meeting Goerdeler, frequently, at my brother's office
in Berlin, and in his flat in Lichterfelde I also met Julius Leber.
Joseph also knew Ulrich von Hassell and Klaus Bonhoeffer

137

and spent much of his time with Max Habermann, but above
all he worked with Bernhard Letterhaus. He was in touch with
resistance in the Services through Glaus von Stauffenberg.'

Joseph Winner was sentenced to death by the People's
Court, under the presidency of Freisler, on 8 September,
1944, as one of the principals in the attempt of 20 July 1944.
He was hanged the same day.

138

BERTHOLD SCHENK GRAF von
STAUFFENBERG

15 March 190510 August 1944

BEBTHOLD SCHENK GRAF VON STAUFFENBERG
studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Jena, Berlin and

Photograph taken In the People's Court

139

Tubingen, and after taking the degree of Doctor of Law in
1927 worked as an official at the Institute of International
Law in Berlin. At the age of 26 he was sent to the Court of
International Justice at The Hague, and in 1933 he was
recalled to Berlin to take over a department of the Institute
of International Law. At the beginning of the war, because
of his special knowledge of Maritime Law, the Navy asked
for his services. Until 20 July 1944 he worked as legal
adviser in the Naval Operations Headquarters. He was sen-
tenced to death on 10 August 1944 by the People's Court,
and the sentence was carried out the same day.
* * *

Berthold von Stauffenberg and his brother Glaus had been
close friends ever since they were children : they were very
much dependent on each other during their years at school
and at university. Both were members of the Georg-Kreis
and, in spite of their different careers, they kept in touch to
the end of their lives. They spent the evening of 19 July 1944
together, and together they met their death for the same
cause.

On 14 July 1944 Berthold said to his wife : 'The worst
thing is blowing that we cannot succeed, and yet that we
have to do it, for our country and for our children/ These
words illustrate both his own character and the contrast
between him and his brother Glaus, the man of action.
Werner Traber, Berthold's closest friend for many years, has
written of him:

'Should one want to fashion a statue to integrity, kindness
and the sense of justice, one should use Berthold Stauffenberg
as the model. He knew by instinct what was right, often far
sooner than other people who later had to acknowledge his
judgment.

'Berthold himself was not a man of action and had no interest
in power and glory. He studied and taught law. The problems
of law and justice in the international field were his work and
became also his interest and concern, and so far as he could he
went on with his work during the war, when he was a senior
official in the OKW (Supreme Command of the Navy). Speech
and writing were the media which suited him best, poetry and
art were part of his life, by tradition and inclination.

'All this made him a natural enemy of the National Socialist
system of government, but the step from the thought to the
140

deed was too great for many people, and the course which he
took was completely out of character. He saw the crimes which
Germany had committed, in which her leaders daily involved
her more deeply. Therefore he rose to the terrible situation,
and with clear conviction made the sacrifice demanded of him
by Germany and by the cause of justice.*

141

ERWIN PLANCK

12 March 189323 January 1945

E R w i N P L A N c K , the son of Max Planck, the internationally
well known physicist, was born in Berlin. After passing his
matriculation he joined a Fusilier Regiment in Schleswig-
Holstein, as a cadet, and was later commissioned. He then
studied medicine for several terms and when war broke out
in 1914 went to the front, but in the same year he was
severely wounded and taken prisoner by the French; he was
exchanged by way of Switzerland in 1917.

He remained in the army and in 1923 was attached to the
Reich Chancellory as liaison officer, and later, after his trans-
fer to the civil service, he worked in the same office as a
civilian. He became an Under-Secretary in 1932, under von
Schleicher, but resigned when Hitler came to power in 1933.
He travelled for a time in East Asia, and as his political
convictions made it difficult for him to find a post he could
accept, he spent the next few years in private studies in
economics, political science and history, until he finally
accepted a post with the Otto Wolff Company in Cologne.
Erwin Planck had taken a keen interest in politics and
political science ever since the first war. In his military and
later in his civil career he tried always to penetrate more
deeply into these problems, and to find in history lessons for
his own work in the service of the state. He soon became
convinced that moral principles also apply to politics, and
said more than once : It never pays to use immoral means in
politics/ After his recovery from an illness which struck him
down when he was about 30, he wrote in his diary, on 20
July, 1924: 'The only thing of value that remains when I
venture into shadows, be it of pain or death, is character.
Why should I imperil or neglect it on the off chance of some
sort of material profit?
Hans, Baron von Kress has written a sketch of his friend :

'People who were often in his house will remember him
holding some book close to his eyes and allowing nothing in his
surroundings to disturb him while he was reading; always
searching for an answer or learning something new.
142

Photograph taken in the People's Court

'He had the rare gift of being able to listen and to bide his
time, and he was always reserved and modest; but once he
joined in a conversation he immediately evoked an atmosphere
of interest and intimacy. Erwin Planck was a friendly and
tolerant man, always careful in forming an opinion, always at
pains to avoid hurting other people's feelings. He was no revolu-
tionary and certainly no adventurer, and he had no great love
of taking risks. But where brutality and evil were concerned he
was always ready to resist.

'Until 1933, Erwin Planck had taken pleasure and a personal

143

interest in his civil service work, but when Hitler seized power
he realised at once that the new policies were irreconcilable
with his principles and that the new regime meant the end of
his professional career. During the era of the Third Reich he
watched the course of events closely, tried always to search his
own conscience, to encourage other people to search theirs and
to keep alive to the demands of justice and humanity. He also,
with his wife, helped wherever he could, and he knew it was
no longer a question of politics, but of a fight against evil. The
spread of injustice grieved him more and more and he came to
the conclusion that disapproval was not enough, and to the
belief that he would have to offer positive resistance, even at
the risk of his life. Some time before his arrest he said :

'"Atonement must be made for the injustice that has been
done"; and in this spirit he accepted his fate/

Erwin Planck was arrested on 23 July 1944, described by
Freisler as a traitor to his country, sentenced to death on
23 October and executed in Berlin-Plotzensee on 23 January
1945.

144

KLAUS BONHOEFFER

5 January 190123 April 1945

KLAUS BONHOEFFER was born in Breslau, the son of a
university professor. He was admitted to the bar in 1930 and
became legal adviser to the German Lufthansa in 1936.

Klaus Bonhoeffer grew up among two elder and five
younger brothers and sisters, but soon, according to his
brother Karl Friedrich, created a world of his own in their
midst. He had a good sense of fun, but was not on the whole
easy-going; good natured as he was, he could be obstinate if
handled the wrong way. He was an excellent judge of
character and uninfluenced by either rank or age.

When he was 16 or 17 he began to concern himself with
the question that was to absorb him always, the problem of
individual relationships in human society. He was intensely
interested in men and nations, customs and characteristics.
He liked travelling and his journeys took him from Finland
to North Africa and from England to Greece and Turkey;
but it was the Latin and the French speaking countries that
drew him most.

In his law studies the human and social implications of the
law held his attention, rather than legal formalities and
abstractions, an attitude which is best illustrated in his thesis
Uber die Grundformen des Rechtes (The Basis of Law), pub-
lished in the periodical Weisse Blatter, in which he challenges
the legality of a totalitarian state, and compares it with com-
munities whose development has been natural and organic.

It goes without saying that he saw through National
Socialism from the start, and refused to be hoodwinked or
intimidated when the Nazis came to power. His passionate
respect for justice and human dignity immediately led him
into the fray, and 'Principiis obsta'mp evil in the bud-
was his motto even before 1933. When this had failed, he
was quite unable to sit by and see all that made life worth
living justice, culture and national honour squandered by
a mob of mediocre tyrants, and he began to search for ways
and means of overthrowing Hitler.

He was soon in touch with the various resistance groups,
with Beck and Goerdeler through his brother-in-law Hans
von Dohnanyi, with the Social Democrats and the trade
unions through his wife's cousin Ernst von Hamack, and
with the Confessional Church and the Ecumenical Council
through his brother Dietrich.

When he knew that his arrest was imminent, he made no
attempt to run away, for he did not want to incriminate his
relatives and friends. He was sentenced to death by the
People's Court on 2 February 1945, and wrote a farewell
146

letter to his children which has been published in the book
Auf dem Wege zur Freiheit (On the Road to Freedom). In
this he said :

'Ask a lot of yourselves and your friends. The search for
fame and popularity will enslave you, unless you can equally
well do without them, and in this few succeed. Don't listen to
cheap applause.

'But when you meet other people take them as they are. It is
a mistake to jump on what you don't like or what seems odd to
you, try always to see the good sides. This way you will not
only judge more fairly, but you will prevent yourselves becom-
ing narrow-minded. It takes all sorts of flowers to make a
garden, the tulip is beautiful to behold but has no scent, and
even the rose has thorns; and whoever is truly observant also
enjoys the less spectacular green. It's just the same with people,
one generally discovers all sorts of hidden qualities if one can
just put oneself in the person's position. Self-centred people
never realise this. But do please believe me. You will not begin
to discover what life is about until you learn to think of other
peopl^. If you only listen to one instrument, or worse still try
all file feme just to hear your own, the music will pass you by,
but if you have any real feeling for music you are only
interested in yourself as part of the orchestra. If you can just
develop the same attitude to your life, you will find it infinitely
rewarding. It is not just a case of helping people now and
again; that's usually a great pleasure, but you often give
pleasure by receiving graciously help from other people.
There are other things too give other people their due, take
an interest in their doings, never indulge in sour grapes.
Courtesy goes without saying, and will always endear you to
other people. Cultivate courtesy, it is a fine art. If you can walk
with kings and keep your virtue, so much the better, and it is
merely crude to despise the ways of the world. If you can't,
then keep very quiet. But you have plenty of time. I am only
talking like this now because I won't be with you later on.

*I hope time and circumstance will allow you to develop
mentally and each in his own way, so that you will experience
the great joy of a genuine education. But don't imagine the
main purpose of education to be the high position for which
it may fit you; the main purpose is the individual dignity and
freedom which it can bestow. It widens your horizon in time
and eternity, and contact with the great and noble things of
life gives their true value to decency, judgment and feeling;
fires enthusiasm and makes sense of everyday Me.

147

"That way you can be the kings of the earth. And one more
thing self-control, for thereby you can not only develop your
talents and become able and efficient, but also, if circumstances
permit, come to be judged not only for what you do, but for
what you are/

Klaus Bonhoeffer was shot by the SS during the night of
22-23 April 1945, while the Russians were entering Berlin.

148

RUDIGER SCHLEICHER

14 January 189523 April 1945

RUDIGER SCHLEICHER was the son of a civil servant in
Wiirttemberg. He was seriously wounded in the first world
war and kter studied at Tubingen University. He passed his
law examinations and obtained his Doctor's degree in 1923

with a thesis on aviation law. He continued his work in this
field, and wrote more on the same subject for the Ministry of
Transport and Communications and later for the Air Ministry.
After 1939 he held a part-time job as chief of the Institute for
Aviation Law at Berlin University.

In a petition for mercy filed in January 1945, Dr Branden-
burg, the Director of the Aviation Department of the
Ministry of Transport and Communications, wrote of Riidiger
Schleicher:

1 and my colleagues have always regarded Dr Schleicher as
a man of great individuality. His frankness and his love of
truth had no limits and he seemed to be quite unaware of
intrigues and of the sordid side of life. He was invariably
successful in his work, and as often his success went unnoticed;
but it was always achieved by the fairest of means. In fun I
sometimes called him "Our Parsifal". Lies and deception were
not in his nature, his trust in people was profound and he was
in fear of no man because he had absolute faith in the existence
and reality of "right". For him the word had a deeply religious
meaning, and all his life he had had scruples as to whether his
own ideas were really "right", and worried in case anyone might
be hurt and whether he was really expressing himself honesSy.
He could be most disarming, by suddenly opposing his own
theory. Under the surface he was always fighting with himself.'

Schleicher was a scientist, a teacher and a civil servant,
and at heart always remained a Swabian democrat, but his
acute sense of justice was bound before long to bring him
into irreconcilable conflict with the demands of dictatorship.
His superiors often warned him against continuing his inter-
ventions on behalf of Jews and concentration camp prisoners.
In 1939 he refused a court martial case because he would not
help to convict anyone whose attitude he himself approved.
Time and again he came to grips with the basic principles of
law and in 1942, for instance, made a speech on 'Right and
Law', the publication of which was forbidden. In prison, he
was still absorbed in legal problems.

Owing to its position, his Institute for Aviation Law on the
Leipziger Platz became a meeting-place for the opposition,
and here liaison men were able to get in touch with the
various resistance groups without attracting attention. Under
cover of bogus scientific missions, Schleicher enabled his
150

assistant Hans John to visit fellow conspirators in other cities,
and after the arrest of his brothers-in-law, Hans von
Dohnanyi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, such opportunities took
on an even greater significance. Schleicher continued through
his ministry to send information to the inner circle of con-
spirators and at the same time worked on problems dealing
with civil flying in the event of Hitler's overthrow.

After the 20 July uprising Hans John and, on 4 October,
Rudiger Schleicher, were held in the Lehrterstrasse prison.
He and his friends were sentenced to death on 2 February
1945, and the case against them was based on the Emergency
Decrees of 28 February 1933, for which the Reichstag fire
had been the original justification.

In spite of his war wound, Rudiger Schleicher was kept in
chains, and spent the last months of his life in the same
prison as his brother-in-law and son-in-law. During the night
of 22-23 April he was shot by an SS firing squad near the
Lehrter Station, together with Hans John, Klaus Bonhoeffer,
Justus Perels, Albrecht Haushofer and other prisoners.

On 3 February 1945, Rudiger Schleicher's brother, a doctor,
was on his way to the People's Court with a Petition for
mercy, and had to take shelter in the underground station on
the Potsdamer Platz during an air-raid. From there he was
summoned to the burning building of the People's Court and
told that the President of the Court, Freisler, had been
seriously hurt.

When he arrived, Freisler was dead. Rolf Schleicher was
asked to certify his death. He refused, because Freisler had
sentenced his brother to death the day before.

151

M

5 TRADITION

WHEN in October 1931, at Bad Harzburg, a number of well-
known Conservatives made common cause with the National
Socialists, many people lost their political bearings. Some of
them seem to have thought not only that National Socialism
would improve economic and social conditions but also that
it would strengthen patriotic feeling and revive the political
and intellectual traditions of the past; and as time went on
and the disaster became apparent, the whole question of
tradition and its meaning came into dispute.

Many of the traditional Conservatives, men whose views
and standards were determined by their birth, education,
upbringing and profession, were at first wholly deceived as
to Hitler's real intentions and were able to rid themselves of
the illusion of a 'national renaissance* only after great
struggles with their own consciences and after they had had
solid proof of the destructive character of the new regime.
Many of them placed their confidence in the Wehrmacht,
which appeared to have retained its independence and was
in their eyes the pillar of old and valuable traditions.

The Wehrmacht did not justify this confidence. This was
probably due less to the character of the senior officers of the
day than to the past history of the German army and in
particular to its development after 1918, when many officers
who were bound in strict allegiance to the Kaiser found it
impossible after the German collapse to come to terms with
the young democracy. They saw the Weimar Republic as the
offspring of the left-wing groups who had opposed the army
bills before 1914 and disapproved of LudendorfFs policy
during the war. The military profession continued its old
tradition and resisted the influence of fie new democracy.
The Refchswehr remained a reliable instrument in the hands
of the commanders-in-chief , but it was out of sympathy with
the state it served.

The National Socialists were at first no more able to
influence the Wehrmacht than were the Weimer politicians.
The discipline and control of the army contrasted too
strikingly with the boisterous behaviour of the party and its
Storm Troopers. But things changed after the seizure of
152

power and the proclamation of military sovereignty. Hitler's
measures to increase the size and power of the Wehrmacht
naturally met with approval in military circles, even if the
influx of fanatical National Socialists did not, and though
some senior officers may have had a secret antipathy towards
the new rulers and their brutality, they did not interfere.
They offered no opposition to the events of 30 June 1934.
But when after Hindenburg's death the Wehrmacht swore
the Oath of Allegiance to Hitler, and he made use of his new
authority drastically to curtail the freedom of the officer
corps and to challenge their right to use their own judgment,
he found that tradition was a double-edged weapon.

The rival conceptions of obedience and responsibility were
bound to cause conflict between Hitler and the service chiefs.
The generals, for instance, believed that a violent solution of
the Lebensraum problem by aggression would stir up a world
war which would result in utter defeat for Germany. They
warned him against each successive annexation: and on
military matters they were not accustomed to having their
advice ignored. The first military revolt was planned in the
summer of 1938, and thereafter many senior officers toyed
with the idea of a coup d'tiat.

Opposition sprang from many sources: some of it was
inspired by military rather than ethical considerations, by the
belief that Hitler would bring Germany to military disaster,
but there were many cases where fundamental convictions
lay behind military motives, and others where military con-
siderations were the starting point to much deeper under-
standing. In the summer of 1938 General Beck, the Chief of
the General Staff, resigned from his post, and there began
the story which was to end with many German officers
actively supporting the resistance movement, and many more
unable any longer to bring themselves to hope for a German
victory, even if one had been possible.

Tradition implants values as well as views. Representa-
tives of die aristocracy, senior civil servants, monarchists,
moved in the same direction as the officers. The Bavarian
royalist who pleaded for a patriarchal (but constitutional)
state, the landowner who considered it his duty to look after
Tiis' people, the mayor, the father of the city, who would not
stand by and see the systematic destruction of local govern-
ment and the manipulation of public life; the old-world

153

diplomat who feared for the reputation of his country abroad
and saw the disastrous repercussions of the policy of his
government. All these turned against the dictatorship, and
there was more to it than mere expediency. Men whose
whole lives were based on traditional concepts of justice and
honour could not easily follow such unscrupulous leadership,
and could not condone its inhumanity. At this point the
genuine Conservatives parted company with the fools and
the fanatics who welcomed the new era for the economic
and social advantages they themselves hoped to gain. They
first challenged the authorities, and then in many cases
actively resisted them, and so affirmed the values which were
the basis of their education and their careers.

154

ADOLF von MARNIER

14 April 190312 May 1945

ADOLF VON MARNIER, Freiherr von Regendorf, was the
third son of a landowner who was also Chamberlain at the
Bavarian Court. He became a Doctor of Law in 1934. There-
after he settled in Munich as a solicitor, believing that it was

out of the question under the Nazis to follow his own inclina-
tions and to engage in politics or in some more ambitious legal
activity. Nazi Germany was the antithesis of his conception
of a just and ordered state and he sharply rejected Hitler
from the moment in 1923 when he had been an eye-witness
of the Putsch and of Hitler s subsequent appearance in a trial
for high treason.

Adolf von Harnier was always concerned with religious
and philosophical questions and was converted to Catholicism
in 1934.

On 12 May 1945, after six years in prison, he died of
typhoid due to starvation and general physical weakness. He
did not live long enough to regain his freedom, for he died
on the day that the Americans, who had meanwhile occupied
the prison, had arranged to release him. This was the news
which met his wife when she finally reached the prison at
Straubing, six days after his death.

* * *

Adolf von Harnier never swerved from the course he
believed to be right. He rejected force as an instrument of
politics and was convinced that Nazism must destroy itself.
He therefore concentrated on preparations of a Christian,
legal and democratic character, for the time after the Nazi
collapse.

One day a Gestapo informer succeeded in gaining admit-
tance to a meeting held in the home of the town surveyor,
Josef Zott also one of the victims of those years. In August
1939 the whole group was arrested and Harnier as the leading
figure was remanded for five years while enquiries were
carried out. In 1944, after a trial for treason, he was sen-
tenced to ten years in prison and ten years' loss of civil rights.

During his years in prison he remained just as strong as he
had always been in his predictions of the catastrophic end
of the Third Reich, just as dauntless as he had been in his
defence of clergymen, and in his legal assistance to per-
secuted Jews. Many of his fellow-sufferers found him a great
moral support.

His friend, Erich Chrambach, tells us :

1 was often shocked when we met for brief moments between
questioning or in the gloomy prison yard. Deathly white, his
dark eyes shining from deep caverns, he was the very picture
156

of suffering. And yet no word of complaint ever crossed his
lips, and often enough he made use of the few means of com-
munication that were left to give us a word of consolation and
encouragement/

The notes which Adolf von Harnier made for his defence
illustrate both his own attitude and the background to the
accusations.

The following are extracts:

1 am a true servant of my King and country, not only as a
dutiful subject but also because I am a convinced monarchist,
politically and intellectually. I mean by that, that quite apart
from myself and my relationship to my Bavarian and German
fatherland, I believe monarchy to be the most successful form
of government that the history of mankind has known.

'As an adult, tax-paying citizen, I have the right and even the
obligation to take an active part in public affairs. Such activity
can be restricted only by constitutional decrees or other legis-
lation and only in individual cases, never in principle.

The legal situation in Germany after 1933 led to very severe
restrictions of the political activities of the citizen. But theoreti-
cally, and even in practice, such activity has not been entirely
eliminated. Since 1933 there have been plebiscites and elections
in which the people were supposed to express their approval or
disapproval of individual political acts and even of the entire
policy of their government. . . .

1 have never encouraged anyone to enter or to undermine
party organisations. On lie contrary, I have always considered
it the duty of people of character to forego membership of
political parties if such membership was against their own con-
victions, even if the refusal meant loss of privilege and perse-
cution. This is the passive resistance which a man of honour
must offer, regardless of the system under which he lives. . . .

The most I can have said about Hitler's origins is that it has
always been the custom for State officials to be drawn from all
classes of the people. I cannot possibly have spoken of better or
worse races, let alone mentioned "the worst" races, because on
principle I consider it immoral to believe that one race is better
than another. I have the same attitude to the mixing of blood,
of which I myself am a product. For the very reason that I
oppose the Nazi programme of racial discrimination, I protest
that I cannot have said anything about Hitler's ancestry, about
which I in any case know nothing. . . .

1 have never intended "to tip the scales with my ideas"; I
intended quite simply to give help and advice to a circle of

157

simple, decent, helpless friends who thought as I did, in so
far as they asked me to do so. That was simply a social duty,
but at the same time it gave me cause to search my own con-
science. Nothing is so difficult as to stand the test of conscience
before a group of uneducated but critical and intelligent work-
ing men, with their unerring instinct for character. . . /

OTTO KARL KIEP

7 July 188626 August 1944

OTTO KARL KIEP was born in Saltcoats, Scotland, and was
the son of a German Consul; he continued the family tradi-
tion and won respect in international diplomacy for his
many-sided work in the German Foreign Service.

He was arrested by the Gestapo on 16 January 1944, con-
demned to death on 1 July, and executed in Berlin-Plotzensee
on 26 August.

* * *

Otto Kiep studied law in Germany, received his Doctorate
of Law at the University of London, served in the 1914-18
war and then entered the Foreign Office. He first took part
in conferences concerning reparations. His service as a
diplomat was interrupted by a term as Head of the Imperial
Press Department under the Luther Cabinet, but he was
appointed Counsellor at the German Embassy in Washington
in 1927 and Consul General in New York in 1930; by his own
wish he was recalled to Germany in 1933. He has given the
reasons for his resignation in notes which he wrote for his
children during his imprisonment. Bearing in mind that the
letter had to go through the National Socialist Censorship, he
wrote in these words :

'In Germany there were six million unemployed, in the
U.S.A. twelve million, so that the German New Order was
regarded by the Americans with more understanding than one
might have expected, considering its fight against democracy
and Liberalism. But this favourable atmosphere vanished as
soon as the anti-Jewish measures were taken in Germany. . . .
Albert Einstein, who was staying in America at the time, giving
lectures, became a central figure in the Jewish reaction, and
was more or less elevated to the position of one of the martyrs
of international Jewty, and his presence in the United States
represented as an escape from persecution in Germany.

1 had been staying in Florida for a fortnight to get rid of a
cold. On my return I found that my deputy, Schwarz, had
accepted on my behalf an invitation to a banquet to be held in
Einstein's honour by the city of New York and several cultural

159

societies there. My decision to go to this banquet later involved
me in all kinds of difficulties and led to my resignation from
the active list . . ."

In his notes, Kiep then gave details of the warnings and
threatening letters addressed to Einstein, which gave rise to
the fear that he would be set upon by hysterical German
exchange students before his return to Germany. Kiep felt
that this made his own presence at the banquet more neces-
sary than ever, if he was not to be identified with the official
German attitude. He then writes: 1 was given many
interesting diplomatic posts later on, but whenever the ques-
tion of promotion to a legation or embassy arose, I met with
the objection that the "Einstein case" had done me too much
harm/

The German Foreign Office recalled him from New York
in 1933, at his own request. And since, as they told him, there
was no other post immediately available, he was given
extended leave. He mentions this move also in the notes he
wrote in prison :

'This decision also gave me some headaches, but considering
that the policy which I had publicly represented in America in
the past year had been completely reversed, I felt that it was
essential that a new man should repkce me. Though some of
iny friends and acquaintances condemned my attitude I realise,
in retrospect, that I was absolutely right/

Otto Kiep then led a trade delegation to South America, in
1934, and to East Asia in 1935. From 1937 to 1939 he was the
German representative on the London Non-intervention
Committee for Spain. In 1939, instead of staying in England,
which would have meant internment, he chose to return to
Germany and entered the Foreign Department of the Armed
Forces Headquarters, which became one of the key positions
for resistance activities against Hitler, as a reserve-officer.
He managed to keep his activities secret until the day when a
tea-time conversation at Elisabeth von Thadden's flat, about
the war situation and the collapse of the eastern front, was
betrayed to the Gestapo. On 28 September 1943, Otto
Kiep visited his sister Ida and confided to her, as she wrote
after his death:

'I have been thinking seriously about this matter for a long
160

time. If we don't do something soon to change course we'll all
be on the rocks for certain. I had always hoped that as in 1813
a Yordk would appear among the generals to put things into
reverse on his own responsibility ... if they're on my tail
now it's only because of what I said at the tea-party. Naturally
they try to liquidate everybody who sees through the party and
its machinations, or has any political vision. I am confiding in
you because it is very likely that after I am arrested they will
arrest my wife too. That is what happens now.

161

"I must ask you to look after the children for me and to tell
my brothers, if anything happens to me, that I send them a fond
farewell and that they should think of my death as if I had
been killed in the front line/

After this visit Otto Kiep went back to Berlin. On 16
January, three SS men came to his home and took him away.
Two criminal investigation officials remained in the house to
guard his 16-year-old son, Albrecht. A few days later his wife
Hanna was arrested, and while the parents were imprisoned
in the concentration camp at Ravensbriick, separated from
one another by a wall, Albrecht, by then just 17, was called
up on 1 April 1944, for service with the Navy at Stralsund.

After the execution of Otto Kiep, his wife was released.
Three months later his son was reported missing after his
ship was sunk off the Finnish coast.

162

KARL FRIEDRICH GOERDELER

31 July 18842 February 1945

KARL GOERDELER came from a conservative Prussian
family with a long tradition in the Civil Service. He studied
law and later had some experience of commerce and banking.

Photograph taken In the People's Court

163

He served in the 1914-18 war, and from 1920 to 1930, a time
when his sympathies were with the German National Party,
he was Deputy Burgermeister of Konigsberg. From 1930 to
1937 he was Oberburgermeister in Leipzig, and in his spare
time worked under Briining as Commissioner for price regu-
lation. He put his many connections and his reputation in local
government at the service of the resistance movement and
became one of its leading figures. He was condemned to
death on 7 September 1944, and was executed after imprison-
ment and torture, on 2 February 1945.
* * *

The German opposition to Hitler had to contend with
endless difficulties and set-backs, and in such circumstances
the personality of Karl Friedrich Goerdeler, with his iron
nerve and his indomitable will, was a powerful asset. Above
all he had an unshakable belief that by virtue of human
reason and vision, good would finally prevail. He was con-
vinced that a system which lives 'from financial folly,
economic compulsion, political terror, lawlessness and
amorality' could not last long. Sooner or later collapse was
certain, *by the laws of Nature and of God'.

A secret circular letter which Goerdeler sent to the generals
in March 1943 makes his attitude clear:

It is no good whitewashing the facts or burying our con-
science, for that will not absolve us from the duty of averting
this disaster before it is too late. 1918 should have taught us to
know when the time has come. If one is seriously convinced
that the war cannot be won and that a better opportunity for
negotiation will not arise, then one must substitute political for
military action; and if the government of the day stands in the
way, the Government must fall, as governments have fallen
throughout history; all the more so when it dominates the scene
and has gone far to exclude everyone else from their share of
responsibility. If such a government does not seek its obvious
duty to put the fate of the people before it's own, then the
lesson must be brought home.

1 see no risk at all in embarking on negotiations. How is it
possible that a decent people can put up with such an unbear-
able system for so long? The explanation is simple: only
because all infringements of justice and decency are protected
by secrecy and terrorism. But all this can change at one blow if
these impossible conditions are brought out into the light of
164

aay. ne merman people snouia be told out loud ot what they
already know and discuss in secret, of the consequences of
incompetent military leadership, of the excess of corruption and
of the countless crimes, which are quite incompatible with
honour. They should then be asked to declare in public whether
they are prepared to defend this state of affairs, and which of
them can justify it. I guarantee that no-one in the world, not
even a born criminal, would publicly associate himself with
such a criminal system.

It is a great mistake to assume that the moral force of the
German people is exhausted; the fact is merely that it has been
deliberately weakened. The only hope of salvation is to sweep
away the secrecy and terror, to restore justice and decent
government and so to pave the way to a great moral revival.
We must not be shaken in our belief that the German people
want in the future, as in the past, justice, honesty and truthful-
ness. And as in the past too, the few degenerate elements who
do not so wish must be kept in check by the legal power of the
state.

'The practical solution is to bring about the conditions,
even if only for twenty-four hours, in which the truth can be
told, to restore confidence in the resolve that justice and good
government shall again prevail.'

165

EWALD von KLEIST-SCHMENZIN

22 March 18909 April 1945

EWALD VON KLEIST-SCHMENZIN grew up on his
parents' estate at Dubberow in Pomerania. He was a lawyer
and landowner, chairman of the District Employers' Asso-
ciation and a member of the provincial Synod. Politically, he
was in sympathy with the Deutschnationde Volkspartei (the
National Party); and with the Stahlhelm movement. In 1933
he came into collision with Hugenberg over the formation of
a coalition Cabinet of the Nationalists and the National
Socialists.

He was first arrested on 1 May 1933, and kept in prison for
a few days by the Belgard police; on 21 June he was arrested
again and taken to Schievelbein for three weeks.

His third arrest was the result of his connection with
various resistance groups involved in the 20 July rising and of
their meetings at Schmenzin, his country house. On 21 July,
the Security Service and the military requisitioned his estate
and Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin was taken, via Koslin, to
Stettin, and from there on 18 August to the Gestapo con-
trolled prison in the Lehrterstrasse in Berlin. He was
beheaded in Plotzensee on 9 April 1945.

The following extracts from a pamphlet he published in
1932 bear witness to his lucid appraisal of the political situa-
tion and to his early rejection of National Socialism :

'Now a new faith is rammed down our throats; we are asked
to believe that National Socialism and Hitler, and they alone,
have, power to bring us joy and salvation; a belief which
demands a fantastic quota of gullibility. In villages, for
instance, where the German Nationalists and Social Democrats
have for all their differences lived in peace, there is now war
to the knife between the Nationalists and the Nazis. . . .

'National Socialism is purely destructive, and gives itself
away at every turn. Fanatical party members feel no loyalty
but to the Party itself, and so completely disregard the advice
or decisions of even quite unpolitical bodies or organisations.
Officials neglect their normal duties and, in short, the basic
principles of both private and public life are destroyed. . . .

It is not merely a question of the open National Socialist
agitation, which breaks all bounds for sheer unscrupulous pro-
166

Photo by Atelier Bieber

vocation . . . but the whispering campaign is even more vicious.
Even among respectable citizens the idea is gaining currency
that after the National Socialists have seized power, any man
will be allowed to attack, without fear of punishment, whoever
may displease him. I am continually amazed at how few people
recognise the danger, or even want to recognise it.

'National Socialism would never have gained such a flying
start if normal and patriotic citizens had openly come out

167

N

against it. The attitude that National Socialism is a respectable
national movement which happens to have a few passing
defects, an attitude which we have condoned, has placed our
whole future in jeopardy; and it will take all our strength to
avert the danger.

The promise of the Reichslandbundes, of the V.V.V., of the
Crown Prince and others, at the second Presidential election,
although perhaps excusable on grounds of ignorance of the
facts, were completely lacking in political instinct and drove
hundreds of thousands of respectable people over to Hitler;
and so paved the way to the devil. The German National Party
also made mistakes, and it was quite clear after Harzburg
or when candidates for the first Presidential election were
nominated, that a working arrangement with Hitler and
National Socialism would never be possible.

'Religion alone stands between us and National Socialism,
and always will. We believe that faith in God and obedience
to His Word must permeate our public life; National Socialism
holds a fundamentally different view, and let me say that
questions of dogma have nothing to do with it.

'What it comes to is that Hitler regards as the basis of policy
the fact that he may occasionally say something else does not
alter the case the race and its demands. This is a crude form
of materialism, and quite incompatible with Christianity.
According to his theories, it is the duty of the state to encourage
not ability, but racial characteristics. He reduces the state to
the level of a cattle-breeder, and shows that he is quite incap-
able of understanding its character and obligations. He does not
recognise the fact that every race has shortcomings, which the
state must mitigate. Hitler's first concern is the breeding of
healthy bodies. He deliberately states that the forming of
character is only a secondary matter. There is no point of con-
tact with this sort of attitude.

'In my opinion we can no longer tolerate the fiction that
National Socialism is a national movement. This lunacy must
be exposed, and so must the completely false picture of Hitler
which has been built up. Apart from that I would like to ask:
What have we in common, spiritually, with National Socialism?

c ln the last resort we must recognise that it is the downfall
of our nation and the deadly enemy of our way of life. Any
decent elements there may be within its ranks will have less
and less say. The end of a National Socialist government will
be the same as the end of the Rienzi chaos/
Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin was as good as his word, and
after the Nazis came to power refused absolutely to com-
168

promise. He retired from all public affairs and lived on his
estate. He was a deeply religious man and had no fear of
death. Just before his execution he wrote: "Who is the
greater, who has achieved more for humanity, Caesar, or a
simple, conscientious genuine working man, whose whole
life has been an example of faith? I think it is the working
man. It is worth thinking about/

169

LUDWIG BECK

29 June 1880-20 July 1944

LuDWicBECK was born in the small town, of Biberach, on
the Rhine. His father had broken the military tradition of his
family by becoming an industrialist. But Ludwig Beck, after
passing his matriculation, chose an army career. In 1911 he
was attached to the General Staff and after the 1914-18 war
he held several commands in the Reichswehr. In 1932, as a
Lieutenant-General, he commanded a Cavalry Division, and
a year later the Truppenamt.

From 1935 to 1938 General Beck was Chief of the Army
General Staff. The General Staff, the &ite of the German
Army, was responsible for the preparation and conduct of all
land warfare and he, as their Chief, was entitled and in duty
bound to take a major part in all important military decisions.

On 30 May 1938, Hitler made known his 'unalterable
decision to conquer Czechoslovakia by military action in the
foreseeable future. General Beck strongly protested. The
Army was quite unprepared to deal with the general war
which would be the inevitable consequence of this action,
nor could it be sufficiently strengthened in time, particularly
in the unsatisfactory economic conditions which then existed.
If the Army was to engage in war, the political leaders of
Germany must take into account the opinions of the military
experts. 'Differences about the relation between politics and
war, and discrepancies between political objectives and
military potentiality, may well be the decisive step in losing
the war itself. Not for nothing do historians tell us of wars
which were won or lost before they began; and in the last
resort politics were nearly always to blame/

General Beck's opposition to the attack on Czechoslovakia
was not founded only on his recognition of the fact that it
would lead to a world war and a German defeat. He was also
angered that war should be undertaken so lightly and so
casually at a time when there was no good reason for it. He
knew too much about it to be able to condone a policy which
set out to solve the 'space problem' by force.

Beck strongly opposed LudendorfFs belief in total war.
170

Photo by Atelier Bieber

Ludendorff based this belief on his experiences in 1914-18
when, as he saw it, life had been torn asunder hy the holo-
caust of military action and political factors had ceased to
count; when, in the end, every effort was directed towards
the complete annihilation of the enemy. Ludendorff there-
fore regarded a modern war as one of annihilation between

171

two whole peoples total war. His politics were conducted
in this spirit and were fundamentally belligerent.

General Beck refused to support total war on the grounds
that it excludes 'any moderate political objective* and cannot
therefore lead to a 'satisfactory peace in the Bismarckian
sense.' He was convinced that even modern war can be
limited and controlled, 'not by technical or military measures,
but through a policy based on moral principles which should
prevail in all circumstances, so that war should be a political
instrument and subordinate to politics; and by a new sense of
morality and idealism which would govern the state and its
relations with other nations/ It was also necessary 'that the
political leader should be a man of integrity who must in the
last resort be subject to his personal moral law, his
conscience/

With this attitude Beck was bound to reject a policy which
depended on the reckless use of force to its own ends and on
ruthless indifference to the rights of other nations, which
ultimately brought about a world-wide war of annihilation.
At first, in 1938, he tried to organise a unanimous con-
demnation of Hitler's policy by the Chiefs of Staff, who were
to demand under threat of mass resignation that the war
plans be abandoned. When this failed, because the Com-
mander-in-Chief of the army rejected it, Beck, on 18 August,
resigned his position as Chief of the General Staff, and was
released from the Service three days later by Hitler, who kept
the whole matter secret. In the following years he played a
leading part in German resistance and was the recognised
leader of the conspirators. On 20 Julyl944 he stood at their
head, ready to act. In the War Office in the Bendlerstrasse,
on the evening of the day the rising had failed, he ended his
own life.

172

HANS OSTER

9 August 18889 April 1945

THE life story of Hans Oster begins in the security of a
Calvinist parsonage on the banks of the Elbe. His early
career was typical of the professional soldier. He was
educated at lite Humanistisches Gymnasium zum Heiligen
Kreuz in Dresden, entered a Saxon artillery regiment and in
1917, after distinguished service at the front, was appointed
to the General Staff. After the war the General Staff and a
certain number of troops were deployed in Dresden, Meck-r
lenburg and Westphalia. From 1933 onwards Oster, in the
normal course of his career, worked in the Ministry of
Defence, and later in the Army High Command, in its
important but to some extent misunderstood section, the
Abwehr. From there he chose a course which from 1943
onwards brought hi into great personal danger and, on
21 July 1944, into the clutches of the Gestapo. He died in
the Flossenbiirg concentration camp four days before Allied
troops marched in.

The story of his life is a good illustration of the manner
in which conscience may react to events in the modern
world. Oster was a gentle child whose great loves were first
his garden and later on the 'cello. In the army, it was horses
and riding, his great passion until the end of his life. After
the 1914-18 war, when he was a gay and elegant General
Staff Officer, he was moved by the inevitable distress and
misery of the post-war years. In the streets of Dresden he
saw hungry men, with their women and children, and the
Communist agitation among them. He was a witness to the
murder of the Saxon War Minister, himself a working man,
who was thrown into the Elbe by a raging mob, and drowned.
The Reichswehr often had to open fire, but soldiers and the
Salvation Army also brought first aid, and field kitchens
stood on the street corners. Oster took part in all this and
it was then, according to his son Achim, that he came to two
important conclusions : that 'the professional soldier should
be a convinced pacifist, because he knows war and therefore
also understands the responsibility it entails', and secondly

173

that 'the army should never be placed in a position in which
it has to open fire on its own countrymen'.

In the Catholic city of Minister, during the thirties, Oster
watched the growth of the right-wing radicals and formed
the conviction that National Socialism was no solution. His
hopes lay with the steps taken by the Reich Chancellor,
von Schleicher, to thwart Hitler. Two years later, on 30 June
1934 von Schleicher was murdered, and Oster then decided
to resist the Hitler regime in every possible way and as time
went he even made use of the Abwehr to shield and protect
the oppressed.

When General von Fritsch was marked down as 'un-
desirable* to the Nazis, early in 1938, Oster knew no rest
until he had obtained for General Beck, then Chief of Staff,
the facts of the slanderous campaign against him. From then
on Oster and Beck worked together, and so another pro-
fessional soldier became an open rebel.

On one occasion he reproachfully asked a senior officer
of the Austrian Army, later to become his friend, who
reported to him after the German Army had marched into
Austria: *Why didn't the Austrian Army shoot when we

marched in? Don't you know you have been trapped bv
. . i\> ^

a criminal?

From this conviction there developed in the autumn of
1938 a carefully prepared plan: the British were advised
to stand fast on the question of Czechoslovakia, enquiries
were made to ascertain which military commanders were
ready to fight for freedom and peace; a special force was
formed to deal with the Reich leaders; foreign countries
were sounded to find out how a bid to re-establish justice
would be received; and contact was made with trade
unionists and with representatives of the Social Democrats
so that the people might be prepared for future events.

But everything was in vain. With the peace after Munich
the opposition in the Army had no hope. Hans Oster, like
so many others, believed that all hope of frustrating Hitler
had gone. The day war broke out in Poland he greeted a
friend in the street with the words 'Finis Germaniae'l

Events demanded desperate decisions. It became clear
that disaster could no longer be controlled from within, but
that outside influences might still have some effect. When
the deadline had been decided for the invasion by German
174

troops of the neutral countries whose peace and security
had been guaranteed by the Fuhrer, Oster, believing in a
duty greater than patriotism, warned his friends in those
countries. He hoped that news of the violation would be
broadcast from there before it actually took place, and that
this would serve as an appeal to the honour of the German
soldier, which would drive him to decisive action. But this
hope was also vain.

During the war years Oster took it upon himself to jog

175

the conscience of the Army General Staff. Whether it was a
question of the shooting of Jews, of party orders, of eutha-
nasia or the murder of hostages, he was determined that no-
one should be able to say that he did not know what was
going on. On the contrary, that they should be reminded
time and again what kind of regime they served, what
responsibility they took upon themselves if they did not
work for the restoration of justice. He did not take advan-
tage of the chances he had to save his own son, who was
defending a hopeless position before Stalingrad, saying that
'suffering and distress must be equally shared by all*.

The last year of his life was only an echo of the past,
for he saw no way by which the fate of his country could be
divorced from its insane leadership. He still tried to help
and conceal his friends and to make good use of his position,
and through his efforts to help Dohnanyi after his arrest,
he himself was removed from office and banished to Berlin.
But it was not until 20 July 1944 that the Gestapo became
fully aware of Oster s true r61e in the resistance.

176

HENNING von TRESCKOW

10 January 190121 July 1944

HENNING VON TRESCKOW was born in Magdeburg. He
came from a family with a long military tradition. In the
1914-18 war, when 17, he became a lieutenant in the

1st Regiment Foot Guards, and after the war transferred to the
regular army. In the early twenties he interrupted his military
career to learn banking, and spent some time abroad. He
returned to his regiment, spent several years of regimental
soldiering, attended a staff course and was finally appointed
to the General Staff. At the outbreak of war in 1939 he was
Chief General Staff Officer of an East Prussian infantry divi-
sion. Later, after a long period as Chief General Staff Officer
of the High Command of the Middle Army Group, he com-
manded an infantry regiment on the eastern front and saw
some very heavy fighting. After this he became a Major-
General and Chief of the General Staff of the 2nd Army,
which he extracted from the Pripet marshes in a classic
retreat after the collapse of the Middle Army Group on the
Dnieper.

Tresckow was one of the most impressive personalities in
the military resistance movement. Simultaneously with his
important command on the eastern front he worked un-
ceasingly with those who were trying to arouse a group of
officers to resist the growing abuse of the Wehrmacht, and
who planned the repeated attempts on Hitler's life. After
the failure of the attempt on 20 July, he committed suicide.

According to Bernd von Kleist, Tresckow grew up to be a
God-fearing man with a strong sense of duty and a great
respect for tradition. He was modest and loyal, and com-
bined these qualities with a clear grasp of affairs which went
beyond the military field and which was all the stronger for
his years in civilian life and for the time he spent abroad.

If Tresckow had any illusions about Hitler's solemn vows
that the 'national revolt' would proceed along the path of
right and honour, they were quickly dispelled at the Potsdam
meeting of March 1933. For a man of his kind there were
no half measures, and so he was to be found in the resistance
camp at a very early stage.

It soon became clear that Tresckow was in a unique position
to take a leading part in the work of the military Fronde
and to convert others to its cause. The decisive factors were
his own principles which, consistently as he might follow
any course he had chosen, he never betrayed in the fight
against the enemy, either internal or external. For this
178

reason the personal decisions which the ominous situation
demanded of him were particularly hard, for he struggled
with them alone, preferring not to burden others with his
problems.

But he often talked with trusted friends in the Middle
Army Group at Smolensk about the possibilities of freeing
his country. In all these discussions, anxiety about the
position on the eastern front was confused with the funda-
mental political tension. There existed always the conflict
of conscience with which a soldier must contend if he opposes
his government during a war; if, in fact, he has the high moral
sense which in the final analysis leaves him no choice in the
struggle between his honour as a soldier and his sense of
responsibility for the future of his country.

Tresckow was well aware of the risk involved in the attempt
to overthrow Hitler, but he was uninfluenced by current
opinion or by the chance of success. His conduct was
governed by his sense of historical responsibility and by the
belief that he was called upon to help his country in an
hour of need. After the failure of the attempt on Hitler's life
and in spite of Nazi propaganda against the men of 20 July,
his former subordinates stood by him, down to the youngest
soldier, their love and respect unchanged. A strong argu-
ment for their belief in his integrity.

In spite of, and perhaps because of, the demands he made
of people, Henning von Tresckow was a wonderful friend/
declared the former Colonel von Gersdorff : 'He asked a lot
of his subordinates and was capable of severe reprimand,
but he gave to everyone with whom he had dealings a feeling
of security, for he seemed to know all their needs, public
and private. He was always aware of other people's feelings
and was incapable of hurting their dignity'.

Schlabrendorff, in his book Offiziere gegen Hitler (Officers
against Hitler) records Tresckow's words on the night before
his death : 'God once promised Abraham that he would not
destroy Sodom if there were but ten just men in it. I hope
that God will not destroy Germany. We cannot complain
about our death. Those who joined us were prepared to face
death. The moral strength of a man begins at the point at
which he is ready to give up his life for his convictions'.

179

ULRICH-WILHELM GRAF
SCHWERIN von SCHWANENFELD

21 December 190&-8 September 1944

ULRICH-WILHELM GRAF SCHWERIN VON SCHWANENFELD
was born in Copenhagen, the son of a German diplomat. He
inherited land in Mecklenburg and in West Prussia. As an
officer he served in the war from 1939 until 8 September 1944
when he stood before the People's Court and told Freisler
that he had become an opponent of the system on account "of
all the murders inside and outside German/.
* * *

Ulrich-Wilhelm Schwerin was studying at the Institute of
Technology in Munich at the time of the Hitler Putsch in
1923. He took an active part in the fight against Putschisten
and from then on had no use for National Socialism. With
the same determination he refused to join a student Korps.
Later on he studied at Breslau University, where he took
his diploma in 1925, and it was there that he came across
three former school friends, Peter Graf von Yorck, Albrecht
von Kessel and Botho von Wussow, who were concerned, as
he was, to see political reform on a basis of Christianity and
social justice.

As the years went on Schwerin became increasingly
interested in politics. In 1932 he expressed grave doubts
about the re-election of Hindenburg as President of the
Reich and about the mounting radicalism of the Nationalists.
When Hitler came to power he had no doubt about the
coming catastrophe and with the friends who shared his
convictions, men like Adam von Trott zu Solz, Eduard
BrucWmeier and Josias von Rantzau, was determined to do
everything possible to avert it. As early as 1935 Schwerin
was of the opinion 'that the only hope for the liberation of
Germany from the National Socialists is the death of Hitler,
which must be brought about by force'.

From then on he made every effort to contact other re-
sistance groups and was soon in touch with Oster, Dohnanyi
and their circle; he was a great personal friend of Witzlebeu
180

and of other officers in the military resistance, and during the
Sudeten crisis he, a civilian, became the main link between
the military and civilian groups that wished to overthrow
Hitler. His son, Christian, writes :

'Shortly before Chamberlain went to Munich a last meeting
took place in our house at Gohren, when the final directives for
the overthrow of Hitler were settled, but Chamberlain's surpris-

181

ing flight to Munich made it impossible for us to put the plan
into action. In spite of their great disappointment my father
and his friends started work on new plans. My father was
also involved in the scheme to remove Hitler on the occasion
of his visit to the Siegfried Line early in 1939.

'At the outbreak of the war, he was called up and took part
in the Polish campaign. When it was over he became Assistant
Adjutant to Witzleben and continued his political activities by
serving as liaison between Witzleben and other generals.

'My father, Oster and other close friends worked out the
plan for the attempt on Hitler' s life in the spring of 1942, but
after Witzleben's dismissal he too lost his post because he was
"not sufficiently reliable from a political point of view". He
went to Utrecht for a time but soon moved to Berlin, at Oster's
request, where in various capacities he gave all his energies to
preparation for the overthrow of the regime. His work at that
time brought him into close touch with Leber, Leuschner and
Mierendorff.

'During the final months of preparation, immediately before
20 July 1944, my father was quite conscious of the fact that
the removal by force of the National Socialist regime could
no longer ward ofi catastrophe for Germany. But in spite of that
he believed that, even if the plan should miscarry, the attempt
would at least prove there were men for whom no sacrifice was
too high to be rid of the spiritual disease of National Socialism/

Graf Schwerin's letter to one of his sons on his confirmation,
dated 6 April 1944, is characteristic :

In such times of suffering and general confusion we all need
an anchor, and great inner strength, and there is no doubt that
the teachings of Christ, which have been valid for nearly 2,000
years, give us that inner strength. Every day and every hour,
demands are made on us and we must do our duty, but it is
not always easy to decide where our duty lies. When you are
faced with a choice, choose always the harder course and you
may be sure that you have chosen right. You see, it is very
hard to do one's duty, no matter if it is the duty of a boy or a
soldier, of a professional man or a housewife. Today, in the
war, the final sacrifice is demanded every day, for every day
it is the duty of the soldier to give up the best he has to give,
his life. But it would be wrong to regard duty only as a burden.
I want you to remember something your grandfather often said,
that duty was his pleasure. Whoever looks upon duty in that
light will, whatever the circumstances, be able to draw from it
great strength'.

182

On the evening of 20 July 1944, when Ukich-Wilhelm
Schwerin was led away from the Bendlerstrasse, handcuffed
to Eugen Gerstenmaier, he said to him : In the last resort,
what more can we do than die for our cause?' He was sen-
tenced to death, and executed later in the day.

183

PETER GRAF YORCK von
WARTENBURG

13 November 19048 August 1944

THE name of Yorck conjures up the Napoleonic wars. On
30 December 1812, General Hans David Ludwig von Yorck,
an officer who had always and obediently served his king,
acted quite without the king's consent and led the Auxiliary
Corps which he commanded away from the ranks of the
Napoleonic troops which were then streaming back from
Russia; then on his own responsibility Yorck concluded the
Convention of Tauroggen with the Russian enemy, an act
which became the signal for the national war of indepen-
dence.

On 7 and 8 August 1944, his great-grandson, Peter Yorck,
stood before the People's Court in Berlin to answer the
charge of taking part in the revolutionary attempt of 20
July. He spoke up fearlessly and told the Court what had
been the reason for his conflict with National Socialism : The
main thing was the tyrannical demand of the state on the
citizen, which totally ignored his religious and moral obli-
gations towards God/

* * *

Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg was born on 13 Novem-
ber 1904 at Klein-Oels, in Silesia. He studied law and
political science in Bonn and Breslau, began his career as
legal adviser to the Breslau Administration and later became
an official with the Commissioner for Price Control in Berlin.
In the war he took part in the Polish campaign and after
1942 was employed in a government office in a job which
gave him good opportunities to make many new contacts
for the German opposition, both in Berlin and on the various
trips he had to make in the course of his duties. He was one
of the founders of the Kreisau group and a dose friend of
Helmuth Moltke, and he worked on plans for a future re-
organisation of the state, based on greater de-centralisation
and more responsibility for the Lander. On 20 July, Yorck
was among the group which went to work in the War Office
184

in the Bendlerstrasse. He was also among the first to be
arrested and executed on 8 Aucust 1944.

In the last few hours of his life he wrote to his mother :

'At the end of a life which was more than blessed with love
and friendship, I feel only gratitude towards God and humility
in bowing to His will. It is a great sorrow to me that I am
causing you this pain after all you have had to suffer. I beg
you to forgive me. I have had more than two weeks in which
to put myself and my actions before God and I believe I shall
find in Him a merciful Judge. People who are wrapped up in

185

other convictions which I cannot share, will never understand
the spiritual suffering that people like myself have had to
undergo in the past few years. But may I assure you that not a
single ambitious thought, no lust for power has influenced me
in what I have done? It was solely my feeling for my country,
the anxiety I felt for the Germany that has emerged from the
past 2,000 years, concern for her development, external and
internal, that prompted my actions. That is why I can look my
ancestors, and my father and brothers, in the face. Perhaps the
day will come when our actions will be judged differently, when
we shall be looked upon not as scoundrels but as patriots who
uttered the warning cry. I pray that this wonderful call to
action may be our chance to do honour to God/

He also wrote to his wife :

'We have probably reached the end of our beautiful, rich
life together. Tomorrow the People's Court will sit in judgment
over me and the others. I hear that the Army has cast us out;
well, they can strip us of our uniform but they can't kill the
spirit that moved us. And in it I feel at one with our ancestors,
relations and friends. This must be regarded as one of God's
inscrutable decisions which I myself accept in all humility. I
believe I have gone some way to atone for the guilt which is
our heritage, and that is why I am confident of finding God a
merciful Judge. When we came away from our last Com-
munion, I was aware of an almost uncanny sense of revelation,
I might even call it nearness to Christ Looking back, it seems
like a call.

'I hope my death will also atone for all my sins, that it will
be a sacrifice for what we have all had to bear. May it con-
tribute to God becoming a little less remote in these days. I
too, am dying for my country, and even if it seems to all
appearances a very inglorious and disgraceful death, I shall
hold up my head and I only hope that you will not believe this
to be from pride or delusion. We wished to light the torch of
life and now we stand in a sea of flames/

186

6 CHRISTIANITY

THE individual steps forward from the ranks to sacrifice
himself for others : this is the theme which emerges from the
photographs taken at the trial, which underlies this whole
story of resistance to tyranny, which is the embodiment of
the Christian spirit and which finds expression in the great
part played by the Christian Churches in the struggle with

The Protestant Church was itself rent by the conflict from
the beginning, for in 1932 a movement known as the
'Protestant National Socialists' or alternatively as the
'German Christians' was formed within its framework. This
was an attempt to adapt Church teaching to political atti-
tudes, and to the same ends the Nazis tried to establish a
Protestant National Church, to which the 28 Land churches
would be 'co-ordinated'. In the event the struggle for the
establishment of a national Church was synonymous with
the struggle for the true doctrine.

The fact that many people felt the need for unification
among the Protestant Churches in Germany was an initial
asset to the National Socialists, and their avowal of 'positive
Christianity' had some effect. But it soon became clear that
they regarded the Churches as useless bourgeois institutions
and merely hoped to exploit them for their own purposes and
to present the picture of the progressive assumption of
power in a pseudo-Christian frame. The ceremonial opening
of the new Reichstag, after an election campaign of state-
organised terror, took place in the Garrison Church in Pots-
dam, on 21 March 1933. In May 1934, at a synod in Barmen,
the Confessional Church was founded. This was not a terri-
torial Church, but a movement within the Protestant Church
to counter the false doctrines which threatened it. At this
point the regime dropped even the 'German Christians' and
from then on state measures were directed not at the recon-
ciliation of the Church with the National Socialist Weltan-
schauung, but at the subordination of all things Christian.

The attempt to oppress the Catholic Church was at first
a little more circumspect and the negotiations which
followed the Reich Concordat of 1933 gave some protection

187

for the time being. But attacks on the Church, and the
persecution of those who professed allegiance to it, steadily
increased; and the Papal Encyclical With grave Concern,
which was read to the faithful from the pulpits in 1937, was
tantamount to a declaration of war. Both Churches suffered
confiscation, restriction and persecution, and both chal-
lenged the policies and ideologies of the state. They opposed
the biological creeds and the idolising of the German people.
They protested against the Oath of Allegiance and its claim
to impose unconditional obedience not to God, but to man,
and against the anti-Christian teaching given to the young,
the arbitrary methods of the Gestapo, the horrors of the
concentration camps and the ill-treatment of the population
of occupied territories. They also protested most violently
against the murder of incurables.

Many individual clergy and priests became widely known.
The outspoken sermons of Father Rupert Mayer sent him
to a concentration camp as early as 1936; today, he is
honoured as a Saint in Bavaria; he died in 1945, soon after
his liberation while taking a service. Pastor Schneider
Dickenschied, the 'preacher of Buchenwald', never ceased to
protest against the crimes of the regime, right up to the time
of his death after many years in a concentration camp. Father
Franz Reinisch, an Austrian, who was denied his calling first
by the Gestapo ban on preaching in 1940 and then by his
conscription into the army, refused to swear an Oath of
Allegiance to Hitler and was executed in 1942. Pastor
Niemoller's sermons in the Dahlem Church in Berlin, for
which he had to spend eight years in a concentration camp,
will never be forgotten. Nor will the sermons in Minister of
Bishop Graf von Galen, who maintained from the pulpit that
Christianity was an integral part of the German character
and of German history, and laid bare the hollow nationalism
of the Nazis :

'Grow strong. Stand firm. Remain steadfast. Like the anvil
under the blows of the hammer. It may be that obedience to
God and loyalty to conscience will cost you or me our lives,
our freedom or our home. But let us rather die than sin. May
the mercy of God, without which we can do nothing give us
that strength/

In the trial of strength, theologians were bound to re-
188

examine the problems of Christianity in practice. In par-
ticular the Protestant Church, which up to 1918 was closely
tied to the state, had to revise its attitude on the proper
relation between them. One of its theologians, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, went so far as to approve active resistance until
the tyrant had been deposed :

"Any person in a responsible position who takes the blame
upon himself, and no responsible person can do otherwise, must
ascribe the guilt to himself and to no-one else. Must accept
absolute responsibility, not out of wanton revelry in his own
power, but knowing that he is bound to make this choice and
that in so doing he can rely only on mercy. He can justify him-
self to other men on grounds of necessity; in judging himself,
his own conscience will acquit him; but before God he can
but hope for mercy/

189

ERICH KLAUSENER

25 January 188530 June 1934

LIKE his father Erich Klausener went into the Prussian
Civil Service, and became a Regierungsassessor in the
Ministry of Commerce. On 1 August 1914, when he had just
been married, he went to the front. He was recalled in 1917
to take over the office of Chairman of the District Council in
Adenau (Eif el). In 1919 he became Chairman of the industrial
district of Recklinghausen, in 1924 head of a department in
the Ministry for Welfare in Berlin, and in 1926 Chief of the
Police Department of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior.

He had meanwhile become well known for his work in the
Catholic Lay Movement and had been leader of the Catholic
Action in the diocese of Berlin since 1928. On 2 February
1933, he was forced to resign his office. He was then
employed in the Reich Ministry of Transport.

By 25 June 1933, National Socialism had already en-
croached upon the freedom of the Churches, had labelled
the Catholic Workers' Association as Subversive* and had cast
doubts on the purpose of all and any Catholic societies. Even
so, 45,000 people came to the vast stadium in Berlin and
they came without swastikas.

In the next edition of the Volkischen Beobachters, Alfred
Rosenberg wrote in a leading article : 'As in the past, the
Roman Catholic Conference in Berlin was a tremendous
success; and had it been nothing more than an ecclesiastical
convention, we should have had no cause to criticise/

But there was one sentence in Dr Klausener's speech which
Rosenberg considered 'intolerable': If the revolution of
national revival is not accompanied by an inner, spiritual
revival, then all strength and all efforts have been in vain/

Rosenberg had understood the meaning of the words and
replied to them : 'So the member of the Centre Party, Dr
Klausener, regards Adolf Hitler's fourteen years of struggle
and the great uprising of the people, the like of which is seen
among nations only once in four hundred years, as a move-
ment based on insufficient spiritual inspiration/

Erich Klausener was one of those men who, in his anxiety
190

to avoid national disunity, was prepared to give the benefit
of the doubt to some of the plans of the National Socialists;
but he had no doubt at all that a spirit other than that of
National Socialism would have to create a new and much-
needed moral basis. His speech at the Catholic Conference
illustrates his attitude:

'Nothing could be worse than for Germany, and particularly

191

the younger generation, to swing from liberalism to the other
extreme, to submit to the indifferent and thoughtless regimenta-
tion of a system based on the supremacy of the state* and let
this therefore be our vow this day: our lives must derive their
inspiration from the Eucharist, and this inspiration must spread
into the farthest corners/

Klausener went on to say :

Though the Church opens up to us a prospect extending far
beyond the frontiers of our country, though her cathedral roof
stretches out over all lands and peoples, over all races and both
sexes, it is not some vague international movement that opposes
national wishes, thoughts and feelings. The Catholic Church
is universal. It espouses every people on earth. The aim and
purpose of our Catholic organisations is to foster and preserve
spiritual strength in Catholic citizens, and it is for this reason
that we so passionately want them to remain in being/

The same evening, the telephone rang in Klausener's flat.
Was it true, the enquirer asked, that Klausener had been
arrested? He himself laughed about the incident. He could
not bring himself to believe that the age of justice was past.

A year passed. The work in the Catholic Action continued.
New methods were considered for extending its work and
for increasing the individual's power of resistance against
outside pressure. Erich Klausener, in his new position as
chief of the shipping department in the Ministry of Trans-
port, was a dynamo of efficiency whom even the National
Socialists were unwilling and unable to do without.

Then came 24 June 1934. This time there were 60,000
people at the Catholic Conference in the Hoppegarten,
again without swastikas, but with a steadfast faith and a
clear will to profess it.

At the end, influenced perhaps by the atmosphere of the
moment, but also by the tensions of the time, Erich
Klausener spoke a few words which were not on the pro-
gramme, but which found an echo far beyond the 60,000
there assembled. For they were the unmistakable Catholic
protest against growing political pressure, the racial policy
and national arrogance.

On the following Saturday, at 1.15 p.m., Erich Klausener
was shot dead in his office. This was 30 June 1934, the day
of the *gr eat purge', the day on which Hitler set out to
192

eliminate the potential of further resistance to his power, on
the excuse of the so-called Rohm revolt in Bavaria.

Who was the murderer? Goring, who 17 years later at the
preliminary hearing in Nuremberg, admitted that he had
wanted to meet Klausener, the Catholic leader? Heydrich,
who sent an SS Leader to the Reich Ministry of Transport
with clear-cut orders? Or the SS man who carried out the
orders and recalled at his trial in 1952 in Berlin that he had
been given the 'Klausener assignment' 17 years earlier?

And what sort of a man had he killed? A note was found
on his desk with a few words in his own handwriting : "Keep
your word. Do not indulge in false pride. Be angry in a good
cause, but never show your anger. Be straight in all your
dealings/

From the preface to the Catholic Conference, 1938 :

'Suffering and death were followed by the glorious resurrec-
tion. That is why the Cross of suffering has become the Cross
. of victory. There must be some power in this wood that sends
forth life from the cross from which death has departed. This
power is divine power. By its virtue the world will recover, the
Easter of the resurrection will follow the bearing of the Cross.
But only if we follow Christ in humility and obedience, only
if we take up our Cross and show ourselves worthy of the name
we bear/

(signed) DR KLAUSENER

193

KARL FRIEDRICH STELLBRINK

28 October 189410 November 1943

KARL FRIEDRICH STELLBRINK was the son of a customs
official. After passing his matriculation he entered a Land
Theological College and, after an interval in which he took
part in the 1914-18 war, returning in 1917 with a crippled
hand, passed his final examinations in 1920. For a short time
he was curate at Barkhausen and in 1921 was ordained for
ecclesiastical office in the overseas foreign service of the
Protestant Land Church of Prussia. He then spent eight years
among German settlers and their families in Brazil, returned
to Germany with his own family in 1929 and after passing
an oral examination, became Pastor of Steinsdorf, in
Thuringia. On 1 June 1934, he was appointed to the
Lutheran Church in Liibeck.

Stoldt, a personal friend of his, and a Prior of the Evan-
gelical Church, wrote after his death :

'He was a man with a deep insight into life and affairs, and
with strong instinctive powers. Although he was not an intel-
lectual in the true sense of the word, he was a man of great
knowledge and quickness of mind, well informed and spiritually
more impressive than many of his clerical colleagues with an
academic training. When we were sitting together in my
country rectory or at his home, he loved to talk of his years in
Brazil and of his many and varied experiences there. He often
longed to return to the sun and freedom of that blessed land,
to the absence of frustration in his daily life and work, to the
wide open spaces which invited useful activity. He hated

nothing more than the restriction of word or deed He was

a fanatical lover of truth, who took real pleasure in getting
down to the point and in speaking his mind; and he was a
practical man, always at home and able to adapt himself to
anything, with the sole exception of the Third Reich. His
character was such, that any initial attempts to adapt himself to
the new system or to serve it were doomed to failure . . . and
so it was inevitable that the day would come when the Gestapo
began to take an interest in him/ 1

1 From Wo seine Zeugen starben ist sein Reich, Hansa Verlag Josef
Toth, Hamburg. J

194

Pastor Stellbrink was arrested by the Gestapo on 7 April
1942. Three Catholic chaplains, Johannes Prassek, Hermann
Lange and Eduard Muller were arrested soon afterwards.
On 24 June 1943, Stellbrink stood with these three before
the People's Court, which had come from Berlin to Liibeck
to pronounce the death sentence, in camera, on these four
ministers of religion. The following day there took place the
trial of a large group of Christian laymen, of whom eighteen,

195

some of them soldiers, were sentenced to long periods of
imprisonment.

The impetus to this trial of Christians had been given by
one of Pastor Stellbrink's sermons, on 29 May 1942, the day
after a bad air-raid on Liibeck, when he called on Christians
to listen to the word of God and obey it. His words attracted
the attention of the Gestapo, who thereupon established the
facts of his r&le in the dissemination of the letters of Bishop
von Galen and of the spiritual unity of the clergy, of both
confessions, against National Socialism.

On 25 July 1943, while in prison, Hermann Lange wrote
on this point : "The common sufferings of the past few years
have brought about a rapprochement of the two Churches.
The imprisonment of the Catholic and Protestant clergy is
a symbol both of their joint suffering and of the rapproche-
ment. 9

Eduard Miiller's comment was :

That we, the people of today, find it so difficult to bear
suffering, to take up our Cross, is because the meaning of the
Cross and of suffering have been forgotten. It has all become
theory; in practice we are only too ready to make conditions . . .
otherwise we should glory in suffering for Christ and would
willingly take upon ourselves all adversities . . . and now our
Lord and Master is taking us to task, now he is giving us an
idea of what it means to follow Christ/

On 27 January 1943, also while in prison, Johannes Prassek
wrote :

'In this case it is better to be out of step, to be old-fashioned,
behind the times, anti-social, escapist, and all the other
ridiculous propaganda words used to boost the perverted
Weltanschauung of today. We know that our ideas and dogmas
protect the security and welfare of mankind, that in these ideas
of ours the law of nature is on our side, and so is the law of
God. That knowledge gives us security and also the courage
if need be, to say "NO" to the age of power, though we as
individuals may well be crashed by it'

On 31 October 1943, just before his death, Karl Friedrich
Stellbrink wrote to his wife:

'God condemns no man before his birth and does not take
it upon Himself to harden any human heart. We are com-
196

pletely free to make our own decisions, therefore we can and
must wish and choose, and God may fulfil our wishes. But He
does not inspire our decisions, not even secretly; we must make
them for ourselves, though He knows in advance. The com-
patibility of His omniscience with our free will can be explained
by two principles of mathematics : 1. Parallels never intersect;
2. They intersect at infinity. These two principles are contra-
dictory, but both are right/

A few days later, on 10 November 1943, the four ministers
of Liibeck set out on their last journey, to the place of exe-
cution in Hamburg. As convinced Christians, they went to
their death with courage and fortitude.

197

BERNHARD LICHTENBERG

3 December 18755 November 1943

BERNARD LICHTENBERG, from Silesia, chose to become a
priest and was ordained in 1899. He spent a short time as a
curate in Neisse but from 1900 onwards worked in Berlin.
During the 1914-18 war he was military chaplain to the 3rd
Grenadier Guards Regiment and received the Red Cross
Service Medal. After the war he became well known as a
member of the Berlin City Council, on which he represented
the Centre Party. In 1932 he became a Canon and in 1938
Provost of St Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin. He lived as he
preached, in apostolic poverty, strict asceticism and untiring
service to his congregation.

On 28 August 1941, Bernhard Lichtenberg, Provost of St
Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin, sent off the Mowing letter :

Dr Conti, Senior Physician
The Reich Ministry of the Interior
Unter den Linden, 72
Berlin, NW 7

'On 3 August 1941, the Bishop of Miinster asserted in his
sermon in the St Lamberti Church in Miinster, that it had come
to his knowledge that in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, in
the office of Dr Conti, Senior Physician of the Reich, no secret
was made of the fact that a large number of people of unsound
mind in Germany had been wilfully killed, and were to be
killed in future.

'If this allegation were untrue, you, Dr Conti, would have
long since taken proceedings for slander against the Bishop, or
the Secret State Police would have arrested him. Even though
God's sacred Ten Commandments be publicly ignored, the
Reich Penal Code still has the force of law. f 211 of the Reich
Penal Code provides : "Whosoever wilfully kills a person shall,
if the killing be committed with malice aforethought, be sen-
tenced to death for murder." ff!39 provides: "Whosoever
receives reliable information of the intent to commit homicide
. . . and neglects to inform the authorities, or the threatened
person thereof, in good time shall be. . . punished/'

'If the government authorities who are entrusted with pro-
secution and punishment see no cause to intervene here, then
198

every German citizen whose conscience and office urge him
so to do must raise his voice.

This I hereby do.

*A short time ago a bewildered mother came to my office.
She sought my advice and help. A week before, she had
received from a provincial mental hospital the news that her
38-year-old son had died of furunculosis of the lip and menin-
gitis, and had been cremated. He had only been in this

199

institution for a week. He had been moved there from another
institution, which was merely a collecting point for "those under
sentence of death". He had spent 18 years in yet another
mental home, and a month before the doctor there had offered
to allow him to go home. As soon as he heard this information,
on his wife's return from a visit to the hospital, the patient's
father had sent a registered letter agreeing to the release of his
son, but this letter arrived too late, as the son had already been
moved to the collecting point. A second registered letter, to the
collecting point, also arrived too late, for the son had already
been moved to the "place of execution". The mother went after
him and persistently demanded her son, as agreed with the
doctor at die first mental hospital. The doctor refused to release
him, and the mother went home. The father, in another regis-
tered letter, then again demanded that the son should be
handed over immediately. In answer he received a few days
later news of the son's death and the information that the ashes
would be made available. Only God knows how many thou-
sands or tens of thousands of times such cases have been
repeated. The public is not allowed to know and the relatives
as in this case are afraid to make a public protest lest they lose
their freedom or their lives.

"The burden of being an accessory after the fact to a crime
that violates both the moral code and the laws of the state
weigh heavily on my priestly soul. But though I am but one
individual, I, as a human being, a Christian, a priest and a
German, demand of you, the Chief Physician of the Reich, that
you answer for the crimes that have been perpetrated at your
bidding or with your consent, and which will call forth the
vengeance of the Lord on the heads of the German people.

1 am sending copies of this letter to the Reich Chancellery,
to the Reich Ministries and to the Secret State Police/

(signed) BERNHABD LICHTENBERG

A further letter, which Provost Lichtenberg drafted for the
Chairman of the Fulda Episcopal Conference, Cardinal
Bertram, in answer to a letter from one of the Ministers of
the Reich, did not reach its destination. The Gestapo found
and confiscated it while searching Lichtenberg's home. The
following is an extract from that letter :

Tn your letter of 4 August 1941, to His Eminence the
Cardinal, you find in the joint pastoral letter of the German
bishops cause to express the extreme surprise of the Reich
Government at the conduct of all German bishops who took
part in the Fulda Episcopal Conference from 24 to 26 June,
200

on the grounds that the bishops did not restrict themselves, as
would in your opinion have befitted them, to notifying the
Government of their anxieties, justified or unjustified, in a
memorandum. You add that, had they done this, you would
have been quite prepared to let the Cardinal (and thus all the
German bishops) know the Government's reactions, and their
opinion as to whether the individual points were worthy of
consideration.

'Herr Reichsminister, there is a sphere in which, by the will
of the divine founder of the Catholic Church, Jesus Christ, the
Catholic bishops require no tutelage; in which they are on the
contrary the teachers and leaders and must call a grave and
warning "Halt", even to the rightful governing body of the
state: In rebus fidei et morum.

'In this case you are hearing our views through the medium
of a courteous letter; but it would be a great mistake to take
that as a sign of weakness. Though the bishops seldom make
demands, a request from the entire episcopate in rebus fidei et
morum is in effect a demand, all the more so when it is directed
to a temporal power which has overstepped the bounds of
power set by God, and that not to protect the people but to
harm them/

On 22 May 1942, Bernhard Lichtenberg, Provost and
Prelate, was sentenced to two years' imprisonment by a
Special Court attached to the Land Court, for improper use
of the pulpit and offences against the Sedition Law.

The following are extracts from the Judge's Summing Up :

'On 29 August 1941, the defendant held evensong in St
Hedwijfs Church, before a large congregation. He closed the
service with a prayer in which he said, among other things :
"Let us now pray for the Jews and for the wretched prisoners
in the concentration camps, above all for my fellow clergy".
Two women students who happened to be in church were
offended by this and reported it. The charge is therefore that
he, as a minister of religion and in the course of his duties in a
Church, pronounced upon various affairs of state in a manner
calculated to cause a breach of the peace. The defendant admits
having made the aforementioned statements in the course of the
evening prayer from the pulpit of St Hedwigfs Church . . .
He states that he has included the Jews in his prayers ever
since the synagogues were first set on fire and Jewish businesses
closed. He was at the time outraged by such vandalism and

201

had therefore resolved to include the Jews in his prayers every
evening.

'About the middle of October 1941, the defendant found a
printed pamphlet on his desk ... It was a copy of a pamphlet
recently produced on instructions from the Reichsminister for
Propaganda and distributed to all German citizens by the Local
Groups of the National Socialist Party. The defendant imme-
diately resolved to come out against the contents of the
pamphlet by means of a proclamation, that is to say, by an
announcement during divine service on behalf of all the clergy
of St Hedwig's Church. To this end he prepared the following
draft, which was found when he was arrested on 23 October
1941:

"Proclamation : An inflammatory pamphlet against the Jews
is being distributed from house to house in Berlin. This
pamphlet asserts that every German who supports the Jews
out of so-called false sentimentality, even if it is by way of a
friendly meeting, is guilty of betraying his people. Do not let
yourselves be led astray by un-Christian ideas, but act in
accordance with the stern commandment of Jesus Christ:
*Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

in

'In imposing the sentence it must be taken into account in his
(Lichtenbergfs) favour that he has no previous convictions, that
he can look back on many years of useful activity as a priest,
that he is honoured and respected on all sides in his diocese, and
that he played his part in the Great War. . . .

Taking all these circumstances into consideration and in view
of the fact that the defendant is not in the best of health and
that any deprivation of liberty will therefore have a greater
punitive effect on him than would normally be the case ... a
total sentence of two years* imprisonment has been laid down,
pursuant to f 74 of the Penal Code/

Provost Bernhard Lichtenberg served his two years' im-
prisonment in Berlin-Tegel prison. But at the end of that time
he was not released. He was moved to Dachau concentration
camp on 3 November 1943, and died on the journey.

202

EDITH STEIN

12 October 18919 August 1942

EDITHSTEIN was born in Breslau, the daughter of a timber
merchant. From 1911 to 1915 Edith Stein studied philosophy,
German literature and history at Breslau and Gottingen
Universities; she took her degree in 1916, worked for her
Doctorate of Philosophy under Husserl, the Freiburg philo-
sopher, and afterwards became his assistant. Her philosophical
studies led her from atheism to a belief in God and in 1922
she became a Catholic. From 1922 to 1931 she was a teacher
at Speyer and made a reputation for herself with several
significant works in the field of phenomenology and
philosophy. Her work Husserl's Phanomenologie und die
Phttisophie des Heiligen Thomas von Aquin (Husserl's
Phenomenology and the Philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas)
bridged the gap between classical and modern philosophy.
There followed Endliches und ewiges Sein; Versuch eines
Aufstiegs zum Sinn des Seins (Everlasting Existence; an
attempt to reach the Purpose of Being), and Kreuzeswissen-
schaft: eine Studie uber Johannes vom Kreuz (A study of
St John of the Cross). In 1932 Edith Stein was appointed
lecturer at the Deutsches Institut fur wissenschaftliche
Pctdagogik, but was discharged in 1933 owing to her Jewish
origin. Following a long-cherished wish, she entered the
Carmelite convent in Koln-Lindenthal (Cologne).

1 think I know I must still suffer much for the sake of
Judaism/ she once said, and c at last it dawned on me that God
had once again asked great suffering of his people, and that
the fate of that people was also my own/ She made no word
of complaint when she was torn away from her work at the
height of her career, and in the Convent, as Sister Benedicta,
she quietly pursued her secret vocation in complete dedica-
tion to the service of God.

Then came the great day of the final, decisive Hitler
election/ writes the Mother Superior of the Convent, Sister
Teresia Renata de Spiritu Sancto; and she describes how
Tour Yes for the Fuhrer was written in large letters on every
lime tree in the Dikener Strasse in Lindenthal. Non-Aryans

203

were not allowed to take part in the election, so Sister
Benedicta was to remain behind while the other nuns, with
archiepiscopal consent, made their pilgrimage to the polls.
But that evening two men appeared in the office. They had
ascertained that Dr Stein was the only nun in the Convent
who had failed in her duty to vote; owing to indisposition, of
course, they said; but they had a car and would be glad to
drive her there and back. At that moment, Sister Benedicta
had no wish to divulge her descent: 'All right/ she said
simply, 'if the gentlemen attach such great importance to my
voting "No", I can give them that pleasure/

But on 10 April 1938 things looked more serious. The
principles of National Socialism and of Hitler's government
had so clearly shown themselves to be anti-Christian and
anti-God that even the simplest German could no longer be
in any doubt as to the aims of the new regime. Meanwhile
the power of the rulers had degenerated into a brutal reign
of terror before which everyone trembled. In the Convent in
Cologne there was great uncertainty as to what attitude
should be adopted. The Secret State Police had already
expelled from their monasteries a number of men in Holy
Orders without warning or reason, and had cast them into
the street without means of support. The Convent had for
some time anticipated the same fate. If they should attract
the attention of the authorities during the election, surely
their fate would be sealed. For this reason many of the nuns
were inclined to ignore well-meant advice to boycott the
election, and most of them felt that it was quite unimportant
whether one voted *Yes' or 'No', as the result had been fixed
in advance by the Party and whatever happened the Nazis
would alter the figures in each constituency to give the
required result.

But Sister Benedicta energetically opposed this view.
Otherwise so gentle and yielding, she became a completely
different person and again and again implored the Sisters not
to vote for Hitler, regardless of the consequences either for
the individual or for the community. He was an enemy of
God and would drag Germany down to destruction with
him.

There was considerable doubt and confusion, which
reached a peak when a delegation of the election committee
was announced in the office of the Convent before 8 o'clock
204

Photo from Morns Verlag files

on the morning of the election, just as the first group of
Sisters were about to leave for tie polls. This had never
happened before and the Mother Superior left the visitors in
no doubt of her displeasure. They excused themselves by
saying that they knew that Carmelite nuns were not allowed
to leave their seclusion and that they therefore wanted to

205

help by collecting the ballot papers. The Mother Superior
pointed out that the poll, which the nuns had never yet
evaded, was supposed to be public, but secret. Argument
was useless, they had to submit. The votes were cast
alphabetically.

At the end the chairman, who kept the electoral list, said :
'Not everyone has voted . . / and then came the dreaded
moment: 'And Dr Edith Stein?'

'She is not entitled to vote/

'Of course she is, born in '91. She's certainly entitled to
vote/

The answer came with icy calm :

'She is not aryan/

The three men started. Then one of them cried, 'Write
that down, she's not aryan/ They packed up in great haste
and left the Convent . . . and the events of 9 November put
the finishing touches to the story.

In the quiet suburb of Lindenthal everything was more or
less orderly, but news of the burning of the synagogues, the
beating up of Jewish people and the excesses against them
and their friends, penetrated to the Convent and filled every-
one with horror.

Sister Benedicta was numbed with pain. The fear that her
presence might endanger the community gave her no peace.

At the end of 1938 Edith Stein moved to a Convent at
Echt, in Holland, and there she was arrested by the SS in
January 1942. When she entered the Gestapo office in
Maastricht, her greeting was 'Jesus Christ be praised/ Later,
in a period of 'conditional freedom of movement/ during
which she had to wear a yellow star to show that she was
Jewish, she told the Mother Superior that she had been
driven to use this greeting by the conviction that she was
'in the midst of the ancient struggle between Jesus and
Lucifer/

Her final arrest took place on 2 August 1942. Jewish eye-
witnesses reported: 'Among the prisoners brought in on
5 August, Sister Benedicta attracted attention by her great
calm and composure. The distress in the camp and the agita-
tion among the new arrivals was indescribable. Sister
Benedicta went around among the women, consoling, help-
ing, calming, soothing as an angel. She immediately took
over the wretched children, washed them and combed their
206

hair, saw that they had food and attention. As long as she
stayed in the camp she made of washing and cleaning a
labour of love, and we were all amazed/

Then her road led her to the east. In Auschwitz camp, on
9 August 1942, Edith Stein, No. 44074, was murdered in a
gas chamber.

207

MAX JOSEF METZGER

3 February 188717 April 1944

MAX JOSEF METZGER grew up in the Black Forest. He
studied theology in Freiburg, was ordained in 1911, took his
Doctorate of Theology and spent some time as a curate in
Mannheim, Karlsruhe and Oberhausen. He went to France
in 1914 as a divisional chaplain, and then in 1916 became
chaplain in charge of the People's Welfare Centre in
Graz. He was deeply influenced by the war and soon became
one of the leading Catholic pacifists. In 1917 he and Strat-
mann, a Dominican, founded the 'Peace League of German
Catholics', of which he was the Secretary-General up to his
death. He also played an important part in the foundation in
1938 of the 'Una Sancta Brotherhood'.

His concern for the future of Germany induced Max Josef
Metzger to submit to the Protestant Archbishop of Upsala,
Dr Eiden, in 1942, a memorandum on the question of a new
system of government for Germany, with the request that
he should intercede with the Bishops in Allied countries to
use their influence to make peace. This document, in which
as a precautionary measure (as it was to be sent out of
Germany), 'Nordland' was used instead of Germany and
'Anti-national Party' instead of National Socialist Party, read
as follows :

'Germany (the united German Lander) shall be a federation
of democratically governed free states (Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony,
etc.). Within the framework of the German Constitution each
state shall enjoy independence in internal affairs and admini-
stration, and in cultural and social matters. Foreign policy is
of common concern and shall be the responsibility of the
Federal Government.

The Constitution shall ensure that German policy, both
domestic and foreign, shall be a sincere policy of peace based
on moral truth, good faith and social justice.

The domestic peace policy shall rest on fundamental moral
laws, on the recognition and preservation of equal basic rights
for all citizens, on a progressive social policy (security of work,
earnings and livelihood; nationalisation of all mines, power
stations, railways and of real estate, including arable land,

209

forests and lakes; a social tax policy which shall protect the
weak); and a just policy in questions of nationality and race (to
include self -administration for national bodies, e.g. in respect
of public funds for school purposes).

* The foreign peace policy shall recognise and respect to the
full the rights of foreign peoples and shall support, or effect,
voluntary disarmament (except for a police force for the pre-
servation of internal order) in favour of supra-national armed
forces which, in the service of an impartial organisation of the
"United States of Europe'*, shall take over the protection of
lawful peace among the states.

The Constitution shall guarantee to every German personal
dignity and legal security, freedom of culture, language, con-
science and religion; freedom of opinion and, finally, freedom
in the possession and use of personal property, within the
bounds necessary in the common interest, which shall be clearly
and legally defined.

'All Germans who can be proved guilty of contributing
towards the national disaster and of abusing their own people,
in common with all persons sentenced for common crimes, shall
be deprived of civil rights for a period of twenty years (voting
right, the right to hold public office, etc.). The complicity of all
agents of the National Socialist Party and its affiliated organisa-
tions and of their military self-protection organisation shall be
presumed, until or unless their personal and political reliability
can be proved. The national register of such persons shall be
public.

'Until such time as the new constitution has been approved
on the basis of general, free national elections, legislative power
in Germany shall be vested in the German Volkstag. The V oiks-
tag shall consist of leading representatives of all branches of
public life, who shall be selected initially from the German
Order of Peace, an association of such personalities from all
political groups and former parties who, in defence of the
moral, social and political principals of the new peace policy,
have proved their worth before their people and the world,
particularly by the fact that they were prepared for the sake
of their convictions to suffer personal disadvantage through the
disfavour of the discredited regime.

This political programme has been drawn up for use in the
event of a revolution at the end of the war, during which the
continuity of justice could no longer be preserved/

This document fell into the hands of a woman Gestapo
agent; and Metzger, who had already been imprisoned for a
time in 1936, was arrested by the Gestapo on 29 June 1943,
210

and condemned for Tiigh treason and for assisting the
enemy'. For him, of course, there was 'no room' in the Third
Reich, as Freisler made quite clear before the People's Court.

Brother Paulus as Metzger called himself, after the apostle,
had often spoken at the great international peace congresses
of the post-war years in Berne, the Hague, Graz, Luxem-
bourg and Constance; in 1921 he was the first German to raise
his voice in Paris where he proclaimed that knowledge of
Christian obligation demanded of every Christian that he
live up to God's Commandments in the political sphere also.
'That is what brings peace, that spirit of final, personal
sacrifice, even at the cost of one's own life, just as Christ paid
the price on the Cross; self-sacrifice for truth, justice, love
and peace, for the kingdom of God on earth/

When the death sentence was pronounced on 14 October
1943, Brother Paulus replied quite calmly: 1 should like to say
once more that I have a clear conscience before God and
before my people and that I have only tried to serve
them . . . now it is done. I am at peace, I have offered up my
life to God for the peace of the world and the unity of the
Church/ He was executed at Brandenburg on 17 April 1944

211

FRIEDRICH JUSTUS PERELS

13 November 191023 April 1945

FRIEDRICH JUSTUS PERELS was closely connected with
the Church from his early youth. While he was a pupil of a
Berlin Gymnasium he belonged to a schoolchildren's Bible
class, and as a law student in Heidelberg and Berlin he
was a member of the Christian Student Association. After his
first law examination in 1933 he spent most of his time work-
ing for the Pfanernotbund and the Confessional Church.
He died a deeply convinced Christian. Owing to the Sippen-
haft system, his father, Dr Ernst Perels, a professor at Berlin
University, fell victim to the Gestapo at the same time.
* * *

Christianity for Friedrich Justus Perels meant that God
wished to be taken at His word, and would then make his
people free and mould their lives. While he was working for
the Confessional Church he therefore consistently rejected
'German-Christian' interpretations of the scriptures and
insisted that they should be presented unfalsified and
unabridged, and that conclusions should be drawn accord-
ingly. Martin Fischer remarks in an obituary that Perels
would not allow anyone to say that it was the duty of the
Church to serve the people. "No, not the people, but God. It
is all too easy for a man to claim self -justification in the
service of die people, for both he and the people may have
long been against God/

Friedrich Perels rejected dishonest compromise in all its
forms, exposed escapism and self-deception wherever he
found them and worked with energy, intelligence and skill to
bring clarity and decisiveness into the work of the Church,
striving to promote unanimity within the Confessional
Church and to defend it against encroachments by the state,
In this and particularly in his efforts to help the persecuted,
he was to some extent dependent on help from people (who
were critical of the regime) in official positions, and in this
way, and through his friendship with Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
he came in contact with the various groups of the resistance
movement socialist, conservative and confessional. Much
212

Photo by Atelier Steber

later, his service to the Church, in establishing this contact,
was recognised by Bishop Dibelius in the following words :
*We must remember that he was the only man we still had
in Berlin who could keep the door open to other people,
groups and powers ... He helped us to prepare for the hour
which was bound to come and to see its approach ... He
taught us not to let the four walls of the catacombs in which

213

we were jammed together condition our thoughts and plans
for the future. . . /

Pastor Eberhard Bethge, a close friend and later a fellow-
prisoner, writes of him as a Christian in everyday life : 'When
did anyone turn to Friedrich Justus Perels in vain? From
morning to night he was at the service of anyone who sought
his help and was often on his feet till he was on the verge
of exhaustion, trying to secure freedom for prisoners, to help
relatives of people in concentration camps, to advise the
wives of the clergy, or to help Jews to improve their lot, to
hide them or help them to escape/

Perels was fully aware of the danger of all this work, but
his own words show that he took it all as a matter of course :
'So many people fall in battle for this system. I find it better
to fall in battle against it/

His arrest soon followed, on 5 October 1944. Of his time
in prison Eberhard Bethge reported :

'We came across each other for the first time at the end of
November 1944, when 1 saw him wave to me from his cell
window while I was at exercise, and every time round he
again climbed on his stool so that he could wave. We had no
chance to speak to each other until March 1945, when I was
given a job as boilerman and passed his cell at meal times.
Meanwhile we had exchanged secret messages to let each other
know about our interrogations. His were particularly brutal;
for weeks he had to endure physical ill-treatment, continuous
threats to his family and the vilest abuse.

1 myself learnt the following facts about him : that he had
belonged to the Freiburg Circle, with Hitter, Wolff, von Dietz
and Bauer; that he was very closely in touch with those who
took part in the attempt of 20 July; and that he was con-
tinuously involved in conspiracy with Bonhoeffer and von
Dohnanyi, and knew also the chief of the Berlin Criminal
Police, Nebe, a staunch opponent of the regime.

'On 2 February, he was condemned to death, nominally for
having failed to report to the police. Riidiger Schleicher, Klaus
Bonhoeffer, Hans John, Hans Kloss (of Vienna) and Perels were
all tried at the same time, but only Kloss escaped with as little
as four years penal servitude; from him I heard later that on
the day of the trial Perels had conducted an extremely able
defence and that he bore himself very well.

The condemned men were transferred to my wing and I
managed to talk with them almost every day, above all with
Perels. He was busy all the time sending out material and
214

suggestions to the outside world in an effort to procure a
re-trial, to postpone the execution and to keep in step with
those who had been condemned with him. These efforts were
successful, in so far as there was by Easter reason to hope that
the execution might be stayed. Nor in fact was the order ever
issued. For weeks Perels had tried, through official channels,
to obtain permission to receive Holy Communion, but all efforts
were fruitless and with the assistance of one of the guards I
administered the last sacrament to him in secret on Easter
Sunday. The wine came from the cell of Ernst von Harnack,
who had been executed earlier, the wafers were given to us by
the Jesuit Provincial Father Roesch, another prisoner.

'The Allies were now approaching and the tension was almost
unbearable; all the more so when on 21 April 1945, while the
first artillery shells were falling on Berlin, die condemned men
were handed over to the legal authorities and moved to another
wing/

During the night of 22-23 April 1945, Friedrich Justus
Perels was dragged from his cell and, like those condemned
with him, shot in the street by a special SS contingent.

'After die war the Church will be wiped out/ Friesler had
screamed at Perels during the trial, which as it happened
took place the day before he himself was killed by a bomb.

'The Church will endure/ was Perel's firm and serene
reply.

Shortly before his death, Friedrich Perels wrote to his
wife:

Today, Good Friday, all the great solace of the Cross of
Jesus Christ is directly before our eyes. It is a powerful and
eternal truth that He was sacrificed for our sins and that by
His wounds we have been saved. He gives us this certainty and
thereby brings us happiness even in tie midst of great trouble,
and drives away fear and suffering. This I am learning here
in full measure. And all of you should put your faith in this
and it should rest on nothing else/

215

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

4 February 190&-5 April 1945

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER was born in Breslau and was
one of a large family. His father, Karl Bonhoeffer, was a well
known physicist, and all manner of people came to his house
in Berlin; religious leaders, friends of Dietrich's and in par-
ticular the Dellbriicks and the Harnacks.

In April 1943, the Gestapo and officials from the Military
Court came to the house to question Dietrich Bonhoeffer and
to search for evidence that would incriminate him and his
friends, but it was not until after the failure of the conspiracy
of 20 July that the incriminating evidence fell into their
hands. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had fought hard to survive, he
had used great ingenuity and he was always optimistic. But
he had often said to himself and to his friends, that he who
lives by the sword must reckon that he may also die by it.
On 5 April 1945 he was killed in the Flossenbiirg concentra-
tion camp.

* * *

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an intellectual, energetic and
sensitive. He liked to have room to breathe and was con-
vinced that the joys and satisfactions of life depend on a few
important decisions : they might be obvious decisions or the
outcome of thought and conflict, in either case no further
discussion was needed. In his own life two decisions were
vital; the decision to go into the Church and the choice of
the Confessional Church, and the decision to take violent
political action which was on the face of it so flagrantly
opposed to the traditions of his Church.

Twice he was presented with tempting opportunities to
evade such decisions and twice he thrust them aside. In 1935,
in the midst of preparations for a journey to India, he was
recalled from his position as German Pastor in England to
take charge of an illegal training school for teachers in
Pommerania. He was not much older than his pupils, but he
became an inspiring teacher to a new generation of
theologians. The personal difficulties which his work
involved were not immediately evident. That changed in
216

1939, for by then he knew that he must engage in political as
well as religious resistance, and that he must accept all
the danger and loneliness which this entailed, because he
could not and would not burden his Church with such
things. In the summer of 1939, while on a lecture tour in
the United States, he watched with anxiety and dismay
the development of world affairs. He was offered a home,
an office and a professorship, but he chose to return to
Germany.

217

A passage in his diary reads : In everything I do I miss
Germany, my own people ... I cannot understand why I am
here . . . The short prayer in which we remembered our
German colleagues was almost too much for me ... In the
event of war I do not want to find myself here . . . Since I
have been on board ship, I am no longer in two minds about
the future/

Later, from his cell, he wrote to his friend Eberhard
Bethge : 1 reckon the fact that I sit here is part of my share
in the fate of Germany, a share which I am resolved to
accept/ And so with a few clear-cut decisions he committed
himself beyond retreat, and in doing so found a great inner
freedom. He was free to meet people of all kinds and con-
victions, and approached them in an encouraging, undog-
matic and resourceful manner; to take holidays whenever
the opportunity occurred, to lose himself in playing the
music he loved best, the masters before Bach, and the great
classics. He had zest for life and the capacity to impart it
to others. He was a good teacher because there was nothing
of the lecturer about him, a convincing talker because he
never expected other people automatically to agree with
him.

During his two years in prison, Bonhoeffer occupied him-
self with theological writings, and his profound experience
found expression in his letters and poems. The following are
extracts from a fragment of a letter, unpublished, which he
wrote in Tegel prison in 1943 :

*Even if you must scorn life in order to master it, at least do
not forget to love it once you have done so. Beware of speaking
too lightly of happiness and of flirting with misery : that is the
negation of living, an abuse of man as he was created and as
he lives his life, a poor sinner yearning for happiness as a slight
sign of friendliness from God. It is not so easy to be unhappy,
and he who is so does not scorn or abuse the man who is happy.
There is no good reason to be willing to bear misery unless it
is to make other people happy. Unhappiness comes of itself, or
rather from God, and we have no need to run after it. To
become unhappy is fate. But to want to be unhappy is blas-
phemy, and a grave spiritual illness.

'History, like nature, develops an excess of force to attain a

necessary but modest goal. History adopts extravagant measures

to preserve mankind and mobilises immense forces to bring

home to man one single, essential truth. We see and regret what

218

seems to us a mad disproportion between senseless sacrifice
and moderate success, but we should never underestimate even
the most modest achievement. It is like the one chestnut among
a thousand, which quietly puts forth roots into the ground and
in its turn bears fruit.

219

THEO HESPERS

12 December 19039 September 1943

THEO HESPERS* life led him from the peaceful security of
a middle-class Catholic family on the Lower Rhine into the
glare of the political arena, by way of the youth movement,
and on to an early death. In his schooldays he was a
member of the 'Quickborn Catholic youth organisation and
was an enthusiastic hiker. He passed his lower school-leaving
certificate and then became a business apprentice. But the
problems of the post-war generation caught and held his
attention, so that his work with the youth organisation
rather than his actual profession became his prime interest
in life.

At the age of nineteen, out of youthful enthusiasm and
patriotic sentiment, Hespers joined in the fight against the
Separatists in the Ruhr and on the Rhine, and was arrested
by the Belgians. Three years later he joined both the West-
mark Boy Scouts and the Christian-Social movement, and his
intense interest in fundamental social and human problems
came to the fore. As a left-wing Catholic he was involved in
violent disputes with the Nazis even before the seizure of
power, and in 1933 he was forced to emigrate to Holland.
His political work on the frontier at Roermond led to a com-
plaint from the German authorities, and as a result he had to
move to North Brabant.

The trial in Essen of the Jungnationden Bund of the Youth
Federation, in June 1937, caused great excitement among
Netherlands youth organisations, and the climax came when
Hans Bockling was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment.
This trial led to a widespread demand for support for German'
youth in their struggle against dictatorship, and also to the
founding in Brussels and Amsterdam of the magazine
Kameradschaft, of which Theo Hespers and Hans Ebeling
were the publishers.

'Catholic youth has too high a conception of national unity
and freedom to sacrifice itself and its ideas to Nazi
demagogy. For them such unity does not lie in the destruction
of the individuality of Churches, races and classes, but in
220

active co-operation and in mobilising all available forces for
the common task : of reviving the life of the people on a truly
ethical and social basis. It is quite clear that free-will and
not force is the pre-requisite of freedom/ was Theo Hespers'
message to German youth in 1938, in Kameradschaft. "We
shall never do what is required of us if we throw in our hand
and retire into the ghetto I Terror, or fear of breaking the
law, must never deter us from our duty as Christians/

221

Hespers' attitude rested on his Catholic faith, on his belief
in federation, and he explains it further :

'In the German youth movement we have always been very
critical of the old parties, the cultural and religious bodies. In
some respects this attitude is open to criticism. Whenever we
took it upon ourselves to infuse some life into the existing
system, we insisted on keeping our distance, so that our per-
sonal attitude should not be compromised. It may be worth
while to explain once more why we criticised and repudiated
so many organisations whose aims and aspirations were pro-
bably admirable : at whom, then, was our Christianity directed?
Was it the ideas or the people? We can answer unequivocally
that it was both the people and the half-hearted manner in
which the ideas were put into practice. We observed that
socialists took no decisive action for social reform, that
nationalists had before their eyes not the welfare of the nation,
but personal goals, that Catholics lacked the broad view ex-
pected of the universal Church, that the representatives of
Christianity were not bound by the doctrine of brotherly
love. ...

'None of the leading cultural and political groups which
existed in 1933 found the strength to prevent the seizure of
power by this despotic regime, or was itself able to survive.
What was the fundamental reason why there was no adequate
resistance to prevent the onslaught of total barbarism? Were
the German people too immature, or unwilling to fight for free-
dom? Were too few of the right people in positions of power?
No, those were not the decisive factors. What was lacking
among the leaders in every sphere was conviction, the sense of
responsibility and readiness to make sacrifices for their own
cause. . . .

'The German people, too often deceived and betrayed and
now caught up in a system of organised mistrust, are too
thoroughly disillusioned to rally again from one day to the
next, to some cheap slogan. So the most important and the
most difficult job will be to re-establish mutual trust among
Germans. But this work can be done only by people and groups
who carry no guilt, past or present, and who can evoke con-
fidence by their personal conduct and reputation.'

After German troops marched into Holland in May 1940,
Hespers managed to reach Dunkirk. The British were pre-
pared to take him with them, but not to accept responsibility
for his wife and child during a military retreat. So he stayed
in Belgium with his family and lived quietly in the country,
222

under an assumed name, helped by friends in the Belgian
youth movement. But in February 1942 he was recognised,
arrested and taken to the Central Security Office of the Reich
in Berlin. Soon afterwards, he was condemned to death.

Theo Hespers was hanged on 9 September 1943, after an
air-raid on Plotzensee prison. Two hundred and fifty other
condemned prisoners were put to death at the same time, as
there was a shortage of space for new admissions.

223

ALFRED DELP

15 September 19072 February 1945

ALFREDDELP was the eldest of the six children of a health
insurance official in Baden. He attended the elementary
school, and went over to the Catholic faith at the age of
fifteen. He was then prepared for a higher education by the
Pastor of Lampertheim, and within three years he matricu-
lated and entered the Jesuit Order. In 1937, he was ordained
as a priest, having meanwhile obtained his Doctorate of
Philosophy.

From 1937 to 1941 he did a certain amount of teaching
himself and worked part-time for the Stimmen der Zeit. This
last activity led to several weeks' imprisonment, even at that
early stage.

From 1941 to 1944 he was one of the clergy at St George's
Church, Munich-Bogenhausen. The papers he wrote in
prison, Im Angesicht des Todes (In the Face of Death) round
off his former works : Tragische Existenz (The Tragedy of
Existence), Der Mensch und die Geschichte (Man and
History), Zur Erde entschlossen (Earthbound) and Der
machtige Gott (The Power of God).

The common fate, my personal situation, the decision of the
- next few days; it all adds up to one thing: surrender yourself
unto your God and you will find yourself again. Now you are
in the power of others; they torture and terrify you and drive
you from one extremity to the other. Then the voice of free-
dom sings : for us death has no sting. For it is life that goes
forth into infinity. . . .

'One thing I have learnt during these weeks of confinement
is that the man who is not capable of vision and freedom in his
own mind is at the mercy of his surroundings, of circumstances
and of tyrants. Whoever is not at ease in an atmosphere of
freedom, which is unaffected by outside powers and conditions,
is truly lost

'. . . The hour of the birth of human freedom is the hour of
meeting with God/

These words were written by Father Alfred Delp at the
turn of the year 1944-45, while he was in prison awaiting sen-
224

Photograph tahtn in the People's Court

tence. At the wish of his provincial superior, Father Rosch,
he had readily taken part in the conferences of the Kreisau
circle in order to help with preparations for a new order in
Germany after the collapse. His special task was the problem
of a Christian social order, a subject to which he had devoted
himself earlier while in charge of the sociological department
of the Stimmen der Zeit, the Jesuit publication.

Even in prison he was still pre-occupied with these
matters. The starting point in his deliberations was the god-
lessness of modern man which, to his mind, could not be

overcome merely by the preaching of the Gospel. 1 can
preach as much as I like, and handle people skilfully or
unskilfully and set them on the right path again as long as I
please; so long as he is forced to live in humiliating and
inhuman conditions, the average man will succumb to
circumstances and neither pray nor think. A fundamental
change in living conditions is necessary. Delp therefore
demanded of the Church that it should not restrict itself to
its religious interests, but 'concern itself with the secular
needs of mankind and with humanitarian order'.

For him a healthy social order was of course only a *basic
pre-condition to his true aim. It was merely intended to
create conditions in which it would be possible to educate
mankind to 'independence, responsibility, judgment and
conscientiousness*. The intention was that man should
thereby acquire a degree of 'spiritual alertness and personal
vitality' that would render him 'able once more to com-
prehend the name and word of God, once more to recognise
and consummate God's Holy Order*. For Delp, social reform
was not an end unto itself, but a step towards the 'education
of man for God'.

For his collaboration with the Kreisau circle Father Delp
paid with his life. On 2 February 1945 he was killed in
Berlin *by the enemies of the faith', as they are called on his
memorial tablet in the St. Blaise Jesuit College. He was
always alive to his responsibility for the common lot, and this
he proved in life and death.

'To profess Christianity and to aspire to be a Christian
today involves readiness to accept responsibility for every-
thing. In these times God does not expect a man to appear
before him bringing only his own desires and presenting only
his own private anxieties. In times in which God is at odds
with man over the fundamental order of existence, the Lord
our God demands a man of generous heart, of great
responsibility, who can really take his place before Him and
shoulder the whole heavy burden/

226

HANS-BERND von HAEFTEN

18 December 190515 August 1944

HANS-BERND VON HAEFTEN was born in Berlin, the son
of an army officer. He studied law, first in Germany and after
his finals as an exchange student in Cambridge. He then
worked first at the German Consulate-General in Geneva, and
then as secretary of the Stresemann Foundation.

In 1933 he entered the German Foreign Service and served
in Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna and Bucharest. In 1940 he
came back to the Foreign Office in Berlin, and was later
appointed Counsellor in the cultural department. In those
days he was in close touch with Adam von Trott zu Solz and
Adolf Reichwein.

Haeften had in the past worked with the Berneuchen
circle in their efforts to revive interest in the Church, and
after his return to Berlin began to take part in the delibera-
tions of the Kreisau circle.

For this, his part in resistance, he was condemned to death
by the People's Court on 15 August 1944, after his brother
Werner, Stauffenberg's Adjutant, had been shot on 20 July,
and was executed a few hours later. The Gestapo had mean-
while taken his wife away from her five children, the
youngest a baby, and she like other women and children of
the men who took part in the revolt was held for several

weeks.

* * *

*When I think of Hans-Bernd von Haeften/ writes Marion
von Yorck, 1 see no very clear outline. He was a man of
delicate constitution, and it was really his eyes which were
arresting. They betrayed the sensitivity of soul and con-
science. He had a penetrating intellect and a great gift for
argument, but was at his best on paper. He was a good friend
and a devoted father and I can best imagine him among his
family/

In his book Geist der Freiheit (Spirit of Freedom), Eber-
hard Zeller says of Haeften :

'What was happening in Germany was to him an onslaught
from a crazy godless world, against which so much that had

227

seemed stable and enduring crumbled to dust, but he was for
ever concerned as to how the normal relationship between
men and their rulers might be rescued from this political
travesty. He was a tall, good-looking man, anxious always to
do what was good and right and acutely conscious both of
his own failings and of the sins of the world/

As a convinced Christian, Hans-Bernd von Haeften
rejected National Socialism long before his co-operation with
the Kreisau circle began, and his uneasiness of conscience
comes out in a letter written to his friend Herbert Krimm in
May 1941, from which the following is an extract :

'I am entirely of your opinion that the Church should exert
an influence by its mere existence, and though it should not
itself take an active part in politics or busy itself in secular
matters, it is entirely responsible in the spiritual sphere. And
if in the order or disorder of things, events or conditions occur
which endanger the spiritual salvation of man, if politics place
citizens in situations which as Christians they cannot accept,
we come to the inevitable crossroads of Church and State;
inevitable because both deal with the same people, and because
these people cannot be split into citizen and Christian. But at
such points of intersection, which may be more or less obvious,
critical, or decisive, the Episcopate does not expect the Church
to watch in silence without lifting a finger. This is the time to
speak and to admonish. When the Christian peoples are beset
by the madness of political demons, as they are today, the
Church must be heard in public and must bear witness before
the whole world. This is a part of the nature of the Church,
that it shall by its very existence influence the world.

*But it takes more than this to make a Court Chaplain: and
this applies to all you who are learned theologians, professional
Christians so to speak. For if a man who has to deal with
worldly matters asks your advice as to how he, as a Christian,
can best solve this or that problem, then you must be capable
of giving him a useful and practical answer.

The theologian should also be in a position to give advice
sub specie fidei christianae, not specifically as a representative
of the Church, for the Church has to deal with unchangeable
tenets of faith and not with empirical advice on worldly affairs,
which must vary in time and space according to a thousand
chances of history. But if not only the individual but also "the
governments and principalities were created by Him and unto
Him", if, that is, the earthly Kingdom also receives its final
sanction from God; if it is the ultimate aim of politics to pre-
228

Photograph taken in the People's Court

pare for the world that is to come, to serve and to rule the
people in such a manner that they shall inherit the Kingdom
of Heaven, then Christian statesmen must be able to come to
the Church for advice.

'It is this fusion of time and eternity, of heaven and earth,
that Augustine meant when he spoke of the cMtas Dei.
Catholicism has preserved this tradition more clearly but in
my own opinion, has drawn the wrong conclusions, in develop-
ing Church doctrines which are to be binding for all time, in

229

all social conditions, in every state and society; when in fact the
putting into practice of the Christian faith in daily life must
depend on secular institutions and the manner of doing so must
vary with changing historical situations. Protestantism has a
greater freedom of action and the theologians ought to be able
to give an answer when laymen ask their advice on worldly
matters/

230

HELMUTH JAMES GRAF
von MOLTKE

11 March 190723 January 1945

HELMUTH JAMES GRAF VON MOLTKE was born at
Kreisau on his parents* estate in Silesia. He was a lawyer and
at the same time managed his estates. From 1939 to 1944

Photograph taken in the People's Court

231

he was the expert on martial law and international law with
the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces. He was
executed in Plotzensee on 23 January 1945. Shortly before his
death, he wrote to his sons :

'All my life, even when I was at school, I have fought against
narrow-mindedness and violence, against presumption, intoler-
ance and that absolute and pitiless regimentation which is part
of the German character and which has found expression in
the National Socialist state. I have also dedicated myself to
overcome this spirit with all the harm it brings in its train :
excessive nationalism, racial persecution, unbelief and mate
rialism/

* * *

Before the war, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was still
of the opinion 'that belief in God was not essential' to main-
tain the struggle against National Socialism. But later he
wrote: 'Today I know that I was wrong, absolutely and
entirely wrong . . . The degree of insecurity which we must
endure today and the readiness to make sacrifices that is
demanded of us, pre-suppose more than sound ethical
principles. . . /

Moltke, who had been imprisoned months before 20 July,
because he had warned a friend of his imminent arrest, said
of himself: TEver since National Socialism has come to
power, I have tried to mitigate its effects on its victims and
to prepare the way for a change. My own conscience drove
me to do this, and in the last resort it is a task worth doing/

But at his trial before the People's Court there was no men-
tion of the deeds to which he had been driven by his con-
science. He was not charged with concrete action against the
state. He stood before Freisler 'not as a Protestant, not as a
country gentleman, not as an aristocrat, not as a Prussian, not
as a German *

The point at issue was of quite another order. It found
expression in the words that Freisler screamed at von Moltke
during the trial : 'There is one thing, Herr Graf, which we
National Socialists and the Christians have in common, and
only one : we both demand the whole man/ This sentence
goes to the root of Christian resistance. The demands of the
totalitarian state penetrate the very soul of man, and so
engage in indissoluble conflict with the demands of God. In
this situation, in this chaos, man is ground to dust. Against
232

the voice of conscience compliance with the demands of the
state is a symptom of weakness and failure, of lack of
principle and deep personal bondage. But to follow the call
of God calls forth a whole host of enemies.

This and this alone was what von Moltke had done. It was
enough to bring about his death. Anything that might have
obscured the issue, all other possible indictable points, were
dropped. He stood before Freisler as *a Christian and as
absolutely nothing else'. He died for one sole thought : 'How,
by what means, can Christianity best serve as an anchor in
time of chaos?'

An anchor. The decision of the Christian for God does not
only involve persecution and death, but also the saving of
the soul from chaos, taking it from the clutches of the state
into a freedom which is out of reach of worldly power, into
'absolute security*. Consciousness of this security gives the
strength to cope with the 'degree of danger and readiness to
sacrifice' of which von Moltke wrote.

The sense of inner freedom which inspired the Christian
resistance movement emerges time and again, and above all
in the cellars of the Gestapo. Von Moltke describes it : '. . . So
far as I was concerned the whole hall could have shouted like
Herr Freisler and the walls have trembled, it would have
meant absolutely nothing to me. As Isaiah (11,43) describes
it : "When thou passest through the water, I will be with
thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee;
when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned,
neither shall the flame kindle upon thee".'

233

7 FREEDOM AND
ORDER

THE resistance which culminated in the attempt of 20 July
1944, and which more nearly than any other may be
described as a centrally directed opposition movement,
brought together men and women of widely differing views.
If the attempt had succeeded, if Hitler had been killed and
the revolution had taken its course, these differences would
have inevitably, and rightly, come to the fore : but not, the
evidence suggests, until Germany had been re-established as
a constitutional state; for the conspirators were unanimous
not only in their wish to be rid of the National Socialist
regime, but also in their determination to build something
positive in its place.

Professor Max Braubach wrote in a report based on long
research : 'Anyone who examines closely the personalities of
such people as Beck, Goerdeler and Stauffenberg, who reads
HasselTs diaries, Schlabrendorffs reports or Moltke's last
letters, will come to the conclusion that whatever the
influence of human fears and longings, they were moved
primarily by moral indignation against injustice and in-
humanity/

In a memorandum that was sent to the Bishop of
Chichester in May 1942, via Sweden, the aim was 'to re-
establish the German nation on the basis of law and social
justice'; and a friend of Helmuth Moltke's wrote in 1943 that
the first essential was to break the fetters on human con-
science and that 'the law which has been trampled under
foot must be resurrected and placed in a position of full
sovereignty over all aspects of human life*.

At the end of 1943 Goerdeler wrote in a draft government
proclamation: The Government will begin its work by
placing the sovereign power of the state on an ethical and
legal basis. It will respect the individual, the family, religious
confessions, professional organisations, local self-government
and the free trade unions; but it demands of all citizens that
they regard themselves in duty bound to work for the
common good/
234

Another draft for the government proclamation states that
'it is our wish to re-establish the fundamentals of morality in
every sphere of private and public life'; freedom of the spirit,
of conscience, of faith and of opinion must be restored, a
divided people must regain mutual trust; the only schism
should be between 'crime and unscrupulousness on the one
hand and honesty and integrity on the other*.

The 'Appeal to the German People' which would have
been read out in the name of General Beck immediately after
the elimination of Hitler, says : 'Our aim is a true national
community based on respect, charity and social justice. We
want fear of God to replace fear of men who have tried to
usurp His power; law and freedom to replace terror and
force; truth and integrity, lies and self-interest/

The most elaborate plans were made for the period
immediately after the revolution and although there came
together in the making young socialists and old conservatives,
churchmen, soldiers and civil servants, men and women of
the right and of the left and of the centre, there seems to
have been genuine willingness to learn and to adapt, and
genuine progress iu finding common ground. The various
plans and programmes were incomplete, many of them have
been lost, and the situation for which they were devised
never in fact existed, but the thoughts on the future organisa-
tion of the German state which crystallised at a time of such
trouble and adversity, deserves respect.

The recognised leaders of the opposition movement,
though their backgrounds varied from aristocratic tradition
to socialist ideology, did not come together merely to oppose.
They were united also in their wOl to act and in their
espousal of the cause of reform. Importance has since been
attached to the war-time meetings between aristocrats and
socialist politicians, civil servants and trade unionists, Pro-
testants and Catholics, who constituted the Kreisau Circle,
named after Graf von Moltke's estate where they often met.
Moltke himself was opposed to a coup d 9 6tat : the National
Socialists were to be given no scapegoat, they were to be left
to bear sole responsibility for the disaster they had brought
on the German people, right up to the end. Many other
members of the group were active participants in the
attempt, others were sentenced although they had 'only
thought'. The proposals of the Kreisau Circle represent in the

235

main the ideas of the younger generation, as opposed to the
older die-hards. They wanted a future based on freedom and
humanity in general and on social progress and a European
community in particular. Above all the nihilism of the Third
Reich was to give way to Christianity : 'The Government of
the German Reich sees in Christianity the foundation for the
moral and religious revival of our people, for the dissolution
of hate and falsehood, for the re-construction of the European
community of nations/

Many details were discussed. School and university reform,
the right to work and property, the welfare of the family.
Work should be organised, says the treatise of 1943, so that
'it promotes personal responsibility'. The memorandum to
the Bishop of Chichester mentions that 'economic order
should be re-established according to genuine socialist
principles' and the problems of land reform, re-distribution
of property and ownership of basic industries were also con-
sidered. But the main plan was for the transition period and
the government proclamation lays stress on the belief that
'the economy must initially operate on a basis of rationing
and controls/

In the field of foreign policy the immediate aim was to
make peace, and the highest duty, again according to the
proclamation, was 'courageously and patiently to vindicate
the oft dishonoured German name. We gave warning
against this war which has brought so much suffering to
all mankind, and we can therefore speak openly . . . What
we demand for ourselves we must and wish to concede to
others/

The duty of restitution, especially to victims of racial per-
secution and of dealing with war criminals, was clearly
accepted. The memorandum of May 1942 states that the
German opposition envisaged a federation of European
states, including Great Britain, which must work in close
co-operation with other state federations; and in the new
Europe, which should have a common executive, a free
Poland and a free Czechoslovakia should have their rightful
place. In August 1943 the programme stated that the free
and peaceful development of civilisation and national cul-
ture could no longer be reconciled with absolute national
sovereignty, and so it was necessary to strive for a supra-
national order. . . .
236

But the primary task was to end the war. As the 'Appeal
to the German People' said :

'We want to rehabilitate our honour and thereby our reputa-
tion in the community of nations. We wish to contribute by
every means at our disposal towards healing the wounds which
this war has inflicted on all nations, and to revive confidence
among them.

'Our aim is a just peace, in which self-destruction and the
annihilation of other nations may turn to co-operation. Such
peace can be founded only on freedom and equal rights for
all nations/

Those who fought for all this were themselves denied
success. This implies no final judgment on the rebellion nor
of the motives of the rebels. Their spiritual heritage remains.

237

CARLO MIERENDORFF

25 March 18974 December 1943

CARLO MIERENDORFF was born in Darmstadt, near
Frankfurt, the son of a minor official in the employ of the
Grand Duke of Hesse. In 1914 he volunteered for the army
and came back in 1918 as an officer, with high decorations.
From 1930he was a Socialist member of the German Reichstag.
He was arrested in 1933 and held prisoner in concentration
camps until 1937. In the last few years before his death he
belonged to the close circle of men who were preparing
details of a new political order for the time after Hitler's fall.

Among the advertisements in the Deutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung, published in Berlin on Christmas Day 1943, there
appeared the following notice :

On 4 December, the Lord over Life and Death took unto
Himself our friend and companion Carlo Mierendorff. He was
a victim of the air-raid on Leipzig.

In the name of all his friends,
EMIL HENK DR THEODOR HAUBACH

Heidelberg Berlin-Grunewald

Kasimir Edschmid, a friend who spent much of his youth
with Theodor Haubach and Carlo Mierendorff, writes :

The house where Theo Haubach lived was only a few yards
away from ours, and we knew each other well as boys. My
brother used to be Father Christmas for the Haubach family
as well as for our own, and Theo, who later in life was afraid
of nothing, was terrified of him in his disguise.

'At the outbreak of war in 1914 Theo introduced me to his
school friend Carlo Mierendorff on the parade ground of an
infantry regiment stationed at Darmstadt. He, like Theo, had
just left school. He was a fair haired, well-built boy with bold,
chiselled features, a defiant brow, a smile which was ironic at
one moment and enthusiastic at the next; and for all his youth
he had great dignity, which did not for a moment conceal the
fact that he was a man who loved a fight. As the years went
238

Photo by Atelier Binder

by I noticed again and again that this fighting spirit was
directed at everything unkind, anti-social, inhuman and bad,
and was devoted to an unceasing struggle for freedom. About
a year after Mierendorff had volunteered for the army he came
under my care in a military hospital and, although himself a
patient, helped me in a touching and unselfish manner to care
for the wounded from the Balkans.

239

'About the same time a group of very young men had been
formed in Darmstadt under the leadership of Josef Wiirth, the
printer. By 1918 they had published 65 leaflets, Mierendorff
sending contributions from the front. In the last number, pub-
lished in November 1918, at the end of the war, he finished
his message with the words: "We are waiting for you, my
friends, for your enthusiastic support." This might well have
been the passionate and guiding motto of his life.

'After the war he founded the periodical Das Tribunal, in
Darmstadt, which was one of the most interesting magazines to
appear in those troubled times. Among other things it pub-
lished the famous appeal to French youth, which demanded a
supra-national European community. Like many of the more
responsible young socialists, Carlo MierendorfF was at that time
a radical. For all his rashness, his eloquence and his literary
passions, Mierendorff had a certain serenity bordering on
wisdom, and indeed on real faith. This emerges also in his
books, Hdtf ich das Kino ("If the cinema were mine"), is a
tour de force.

'He studied at Heidelberg and took his degree there, joined
the Social Democratic Party, became one of the youngest
members of the Reichstag under the Weimar Republic, and
when the barbarians stood on the threshold, challenged Dr
Goebbels in a sensational manner. He made known to the public
the contents of the Boxheim Documents, which outlined the
first Nazi plan to seize power; and he chose an extract in which
every paragraph ended with the words "to be shot*.

'He later returned to Darmstadt to assist Wilhelm Leuschner,
who was in charge of the Ministry of the Interior of Hesse. He
knew the importance of impressive symbols in political warfare
and introduced the "Three Arrows" as the badge of his sym-
pathisers. This was in 1932, when they still hoped to defeat
National Socialism, which was then showing signs of exhaustion.
A few months later he was being dragged by the Nazis through
the streets of Darmstadt like a captured beast.'

MierendorfF writes of these days in his notes from prison :

14 June, in the afternoon.

SS turned up at the L.K.P. (Land Criminal Police) Office.
Departure under supervision of detectives Weiss and Augustin.
Conflict over the SS car. Back to the L.K.P. Office. Negotiations
with the SS. I must go along. Drive in the SS car to the
Bismarckplatz. From there procession through the town: SS cars
following me. Siren repeating from the Main Post Office
'Mierendorff the Press Chief of the Leuschner Government

240

6.

/ /.

J.-S>

A*

I,

, XT* </r/2_

241

(later : journalistic swine) . . . traitor to the workers'. Back once
more from the prison to fetch things from the car. Beatings,
kicks. Body, face, neck. Human beings? . . . Cell 32.

The time he spent at camp Osthofen, just after this, was
the worst, with terrible ill-treatment every night. In
Papenburg-Borgermoor he had to dig trenches. In Torgau
camp he was put into the so-called death cell with Wilhelm
Leuschner. In Buchenwald he had to put up the first barbed
wire and help to erect the new prisoners' barracks. In the
fifth year of his imprisonment came the sudden dreaded
summons from the place of employment, by two armed
guards. Carlo Mierendorff expected to be executed. Instead,
he was led into the administrative office and told that his
release had been approved. He gave no answer but fell to
the ground in a dead faint.

Once outside the barbed wire he found a means of earning
his living, originally suggested by senior SS officials, in the
social department of the Braunkohle- und Bensin A.G.,
Berlin. It was thought that in this National Socialist agency
he would be under a certain control, but Mierendorff, active
as before, made good use of his position, which also entailed
business trips, at home and abroad, to revive his old political
connections. As the possibility of revolt drew near, he was
once more ready for action. It was he who declared : 'From
now on, we can only go forward, to victory or the gallows'.
He prepared many of the plans designed to convert the
public to new, democratic ideas; among other things he
drafted, in 1943, the first speech intended for broadcasting,
and devised a new symbol for the future. It showed the
Cross of Christianity within the ring of social policy.

Carlo Mierendorff died in his forty-seventh year. He was a
doomed man and the bomb only saved him from Freisler's
death sentence. The news of his death filled his friends with
horror and left among them a gap that could not be filled.

THEODOR HAUBACH

15 September 189623 January 1945

THEODOR HAUBACH matriculated in 1914, and so belonged
to the last generation of boys who were educated in the
good old days' of the Kaiser and whose school-days were
undisturbed by war-time irregularities.

He grew up in his parents' home in Darmstadt, with
every prospect of security. With his keen intellect, his thirst
for knowledge and his aptitude for clear logic, it looked as
though he would go far in whatever field of study or research
he might choose. But when he was eighteen the question
of choosing a profession ceased to exist. He volunteered
for the army, was commissioned in the field, wounded eight
times and did not come back until the end of the war.

In 1919, with his usual initiative, he began to study
philosophy at Heidelberg. Like so many of his con-
temporaries, his experiences during the war had turned
him to socialism : Haubach and his friend Mierendorff soon
became leaders of the socialist students in Heidelberg,'
writes Emil Henk, a friend of them both. Haubach was
always quick to grasp fundamentals, and as a student he
bitterly opposed the Nationals the future National Socialists
in whom he recognised even at this early date an enemy
of the German people. In debates he was icily calm, and
appeared remote and unmoved in the midst of turmoil; but
he also in those days soon after the first war, fired his fellow
students with political energy and won many impressive
battles over his opponents. But practical politics were not
the end of the story, for he also mastered with rare thorough-
ness the ideology of socialism and the difficult, complicated
works of the 19th century philosophers.

It was perhaps in Hegel that Haubach found the closest
intellectual affinity, the precise definition, the passion for
ideas and the dialectic style which was most in sympathy
with his own; but unlike Hegel he never dreamed of explain-
ing away the world as a creation of the mind. The logical
sceptic in him saw in philosophy the ultimate realm of human
knowledge, and as a young man he was interested only in

243

what could be proved, and denied the rest. But as he grew
older and more mature he began with all care and humility
to examine the problems of faith and to explore the unknown.
In 1923, the worst year of the inflation, Haubach took his
degree as Doctor of Philosophy and went to the Institute
for Foreign Affairs in Hamburg. A year later he became an
assistant editor of the Hamburg Echo and also joined the
executive of the Hamburg branch of the Reichsbanner
Schwarz-Rot-Gold, as he wished to work actively for the
protection of the Republic.

'The countless thousands of Germans who died in the war
must surely have died for a new Germany/ he wrote in Ham-
burg, 'or else they died for nothing at all, there is no third
possibility. This new Germany does not yet exist, but it is
coming, we are struggling to help it, and when we fight for
Germany, we are fighting for a new Europe/

It was inevitable that the generation which faced the task
of striving for this goal should pay attention to past Ger-
man history. In his analysis of problems of military and
political power, Haubach wrote : 'The influence of military
ideology in the civilian sphere is at the root of the century-
old failure of German national policy. All the contempt for
things political, the rage against pen-pushers and gossip-
mongers, is merely symptomatic of the lack of interest in
political affairs which has persisted for centuries/

Haubach wanted a republic 'which should assert itself
and accept the full consequences of its will to survive, for
that way and by definite limitations of power it will be
possible to create a new political order, in which conflicts
will be resolved not without power but at least without
bloodshed, by negotiation'.

In 1930 he went to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior
as press officer and then to the Berlin Police Headquarters as
head of its press department. He became deputy chairman
of the central executive of the Reichsbanner and suggested
various dramatic measures to bolster up the Weimar Repub-
lic, but to his great disappointment they were not accepted
by the responsible politicians.

In the first six years of the National Socialist regime
Haubach was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned. He spent
two years in the concentration camp at Esterwegen, and
after his release earned his living as an insurance agent
244

Photograph taken in the People's Court

After his third release, Victor Bausch, a friend of his who
owned a paper factory, managed to get permission from the
Gestapo for Haubach to work there in a job 'essential to the
war economy*. In 1943 Haubach was approached by mem-
bers of the Kreisau Circle and subsequently threw in his lot
with them. He also worked in close co-operation with his old
political friends, Mierendorff, Leuschner and Leber.
Haubach's various philosophical papers have been burnt

245

or destroyed and only his letters and reports of odd con-
versations remain to testify to his ardent struggle to solve
the ultimate problems of mankind. As late as 6 July 1944,
a fortnight before he and his friends were to string their
bow at the might and power of the enemy, he wrote to a
member of the clergy :

The more I try to fathom the wisdom of the two testaments,
the more I am bothered by the thought that past centuries have
obscured one essential of the divine message : that man is not
only a sinner, miserable, pitiful and small, but also a being who
is capable of sharing the sublime to an extent which our
declining age is no longer able to grasp. . . /

On 9 August 1944, Theodor Haubach was arrested by the
Gestapo. In January 1945 he was sentenced to death, and
executed. He had often thought about the meaning of such
sacrifice, and had written of it:

'Now the limits of violence are such that it may well destroy
the person who resists, but not the force of resistance. Of course
if it were actually possible to wipe out all the people who were
inspired by the spirit of resistance against tyranny, the destruc-
tion would amount almost to the annihilation of die spirit itself;
but what cannot be destroyed is the memory of the event
should such annihilation take place. . . ."

246

FRITZ-DIETLOF GRAF
von DER SCHULENBURG

5 September 190210 August 1944

ON 10 August 1944, Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg,
the heir of an old Mecklenburg family from which the
Prussian kings had recruited many military leaders and civil
servants, stood in the dock before Freisler. He faced a charge
of high-treason, and he faced it with equanimity. But with
the pride of a man who is making a profession of faith, he
said to the President of the People's Court : *We have taken
this upon ourselves to save Germany from unspeakable
misery. I am aware that I shall be hanged for it, but I do not
regret my actions/ In this manner, a man who had believed
ten years earlier that it might be possible to work with the
National Socialists, threw caution to the winds and declared
himself against the Hitler regime.

Fritz von der Schulenburg first became aware of the social
misery which followed the first war while working as a
lawyer in local administrative offices. His sympathy for the
radical groups among the workers during riots at Reckling-
hausen soon brought him into conflict with his superiors, so
much so that he was transferred to East Prussia. In this way
he came to Konigsberg, where he was known as the Hed
Graf and gathered about him a circle of friends who 'com-
bined sound professional ability with minds open to new
ideas'. Despite strong personal scruples against Hitler,
Schulenburg joined the National Socialist Party, believing
that it might combine patriotism with undogmatic socialism,
and afterwards got to know Gregor Strasser and his friends.
But he soon saw the legal abuse which was part and parcel
of National Socialism. This uneasiness grew into political
disillusionment and, after Gregor Strasser's liquidation in
1943, into indignation.

While he was working in local administration in East
Prussia, Schulenburg cleared off the public debt in the Kreis
for which he was responsible and was able to put into prac-
tice some of his ideas for improving the civil service. He was

247

always on the look out for ways in which the cracks in the
legal structure might be sealed, and for men who might
help; but as usual opposition was hampered by Hitler's
apparent success in foreign affairs, on the one hand, and by
the methods of the Gestapo on the other.

In 1937 Schulenburg accepted the post of Deputy Chief of
Police in Berlin. 'I had to decide whether I wished to leave
the service or become the Fouche of Hitler; I chose the
latter/

He now had the opportunity to learn more of what was
going on, and was all the more anxious to find kindred
spirits. Goebbels soon began to distrust him. When Schulen-
burg became President of Lower and Upper Silesia in 1939,
he was determined that his province should become a good
example to others, but his energetic measures to this end
soon got him into trouble with the Party and earned him the
label 'politically unreliable*.

The war took him to the eastern front and, as in his civil
job, Tritzi', now a platoon commander in an infantry com-
pany, was an example of composure, caution, conscientious-
ness and humour. His war experiences matured him and
hardened his convictions, and later on when he was on the
staff of General von Unruh, in Paris, he was willing and able
to help and to spin the web.

He rarely only in decisive moments lifted the mask
which hid his real intentions. He was particularly well in-
formed on everything from Hitler's latest utterances to the
position at the front, from blunders in the plans for industry
and food economy to the content of the secret service files,
and he had a sure instinct for discovering people who thought
as he did. He spread his net over every group from Stauffen-
berg to the military administration in Paris, from the police
to the reserve battalions, from Goerdeler to the trade
unionists and Socialists, and again from the Kreisau Circle
to the Army. He was to become Under-Secretary in the
Ministry of the Interior after the fall of the Hitler regime.
His plan for the reform of the administration (he also
worked with Beck, Popitz, Jessen and Planck on a new draft
for a future constitution), was lost, though many of its
characteristics have been preserved. Schulenburg saw as the
main problem the foundation of a new German democracy
and its further development in the conditions created by
248

Photograph taken in the People's Court

the industrial state; the question as to how the modern state
is to be governed and administered so that each individual
feels himself to be a responsible citizen. Schulenburg took
as his starting point Baron von Stein's theories on national
education and realised that, after dictatorship had been
ousted, there would arise the unique opportunity for intro-
ducing basic democratic ideas which had never before been
put into practice in Germany, and that a modern, social and
lasting democracy could be set up. To this end he wished to

249

establish clear-cut spheres of responsibility in the various
social and political fields. He was also convinced of the
importance of practical planning for the reconstruction of
destroyed towns.

On 20 July 1944, Fritz von der Schulenburg stood at
Stauffenberg's side in the Bendlerstrasse. When it became
evident that the attempt on Hitler s life had failed, he said :
It looks as though the German people must drain this cup
to the very dregs. We must sacrifice ourselves, but later on
we shall be understood/ Then quite calmly, he destroyed
the contents of his brief-case.

He preserved this calm to the end. At the trial, when asked
by the judge what he had really in mind with the coup detat
he answered : Wait three months. The situation in which
you will find yourself is exactly that from which we set out/
And after the trial he wrote to his wife :' *What we did was
inadequate, but in the end history will judge and acquit us/

A few hours later Fritz von der Schulenburg was executed
at Plotzensee.

250

ADAM von TROTT ZU SOLZ

9 August 190926 August 1944

ADAM VON TROTT zu SOLZ was born in Potsdam when
his father was Minister of Education in the Prussian Admini-
stration. He studied law in Munich, Gottingen and Berlin, and
philosophy, politics and economics as a Rhodes scholar at
Oxford.

When he had passed his final law examinations in 1936,
and after six months' preparation in the United States, he
spent several years studying in East Asia, mostly in Peking
(This was also made possible by the Rhodes Foundation).
From the spring of 1940 onwards he worked in the Foreign
Office in Berlin, in the Information Department, and was
meanwhile in close touch with the Kreisau Group, with
representatives of the working class and of the church and
with friends among the aristocracy.

His thesis, Hegel's Staatsphilosophie und das Internationale
Recht (Hegel's Political Philosophy and International Law),
which appeared in 1932, and his publication in 1936 of the
political and journalistic writings of Heinrich von Kleist, are
enough proof of the extent of his intellectual study of the
problems of the day and of National Socialism, which was
the spur to his own determination to take an active part in
politics. It also provided the motive for his journeys to other
countries, which enabled him to gain a 'clearer picture of his
own', an insight into the qualities of the peoples of the East
and West and a new relationship to the Christian faith as the

basis of conduct.

* * #

*War solves no problems'. With this thought in mind,
Adam von Trott zu Solz, a man of extraordinary intellectual
ability and moral courage, made, in 1939, a bold personal bid
to prevent war. As late as July he was in London and was
received by Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, and urged the
Foreign Office to take up a strong attitude towards Hitler
while there was still time before war broke out. After the
outbreak of war he accepted an invitation to a conference
in the United States, where he tried in a memorandum to win
over President Roosevelt to a policy that might encourage

251

the anti-Hitler movement in Germany. Felix Morley, also a
former Rhodes Scholar, wrote in his diary of von Trott's
efforts in Washington at that time :

'But in fact he devoted most of his time to the attempt to
arouse understanding here for the great change which, he
believes, is to be expected in Germany. . . . The main problem
is how to prevent a war of extermination against the Nazis from
driving back into Hitler's arms .all those forces which are now
just beginning to concentrate to bring about Hitler's fall.'

In 1940 Adam von Trott returned to Germany via Japan,
without success. Under cover of his official position as a
counsellor in the Foreign Office, and always in danger, he
fostered his connections in all parts of the world, his main
object being to arouse enthusiasm and support abroad for
the German resistance. He was in close touch with Leber
and Stauffenberg.

At the beginning of 1944, on behalf of the forces that had
-resolved upon revolution, von Trott sent a message to the
President of the United States, asking him in great urgency
to let it be known to what extent foreign countries would
be prepared to allow a new German government to safeguard
democracy in Germany. About the same time his last treatise
appeared under the title Deutschland zwischen Ost und
West (Germany between East and West), of which his friends
said that it was written with his life's blood.

Despite his frequent journeys and his endless oppor-
tunities, Adam von Trott was drawn as if by a magnet back
to Germany, where he considered his duty to lie. In May
1944, for instance, he could easily have found some official
reason to leave Verona for Rome, which was soon to be
occupied by the Allies, and so have saved himself. But though
he was reckoning with his own arrest at any moment, he
wanted to get back to his friends in Berlin, and in June
he left again for Sweden to find out how a successful
uprising in Germany would be received in political circles
there.

On 15 August, Adam von Trott zu Solz, who had been ear-
marked as the future Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office,
stood with his friend, Hans-Bernd von Haeften, before the
People's Court. On the evening of the same day he wrote to
his wife :
252

Photograph taken in the People's Court

Toil will know that what hurts me most is that I may never
again be able to place my experience at the service of the
country, the special abilities I have been able to develop by
what was perhaps too single-minded concentration on foreign
affairs and Germany's position among the powers. Here I could
still have been useful. I should so much like to make some sort
of summary of my ideas and proposals which might help other
people, but I don't suppose I shall be able to. It was all an
attempt, arising from love of my own country (for which I
must thank my father) and knowledge of her strength, to pro-
tect her immutable rights among the changes and chances of

253

this modern world, and to preserve her profound and indis-
pensable contribution to civilisation against the encroachment
of powers and beliefs which are foreign to her. That is why I
always hurried back in eager anxiety from foreign countries,
with all their enticements and opportunities, to this one where
I felt I was called upon to serve. What I have learnt and what
I was able to do for Germany abroad would certainly have
helped a great deal now, because there are so few people who
have enjoyed such diverse opportunities in the last few years.
So I must hope that even without me, understanding and
assistance will be forthcoming from many of these connections,
if it should ever again be wanted or necessary. But a sower is
reluctant to leave germinating seed for others to look after, for
between sowing and harvest there are many storms. . . /

The death sentence against Adam von Trott zu Solz was
carried out on 26 August 1944, in Berlin-Plotzensee.

254

JULIUS LEBER

16 November 18915 January 1945

JULIUS LEBER was born at Biesheim in Upper Alsace. When
he left the village school the parson suggested that he
should be sent to a secondary school at Breisach, but for
financial reasons he had to break off his education and went
into a wallpaper factory as an apprentice. In 1910 he won a
scholarship to the Oberrealschule in Freiburg, and stayed there
till 1912, earning his living by giving lessons and writing
newspaper reports. He then studied political economy and
history at the universities of Freiburg and Strasbourg, on a
similar basis, until in 1914 he volunteered for the army. He
served throughout the war as an officer and was decorated
several times; in 1920 while an officer in the Frontier Defence
Forces with strong republican convictions he took part in the
defeat of the Kapp Putsch. After that he left the army and
took his Dr rer. pol. degree.

At the age of thirty he was appointed editor of the
Liibecker Volksbote and soon became a central figure among
the workers in North Germany, and the unchallenged leader
of the Liibeck Social Democrats. In this position, and while
he was a member of the Reichstag from 1924 to 1933, he
consistently fought the totalitarian parties of the right and of
the left and dedicated himself by word and deed to the
establishment of a living democracy in Germany.

On 16 January 1933, Julius Leber appealed to the working
men : 'When it is a question of fighting for freedom, one does
not ask what will happen tomorrow/ On the day the National
Socialists came to power, he was arrested, and from 1 Feb-
ruary 1933 onwards, with only a short break just before the
March elections of that year, until the summer of 1937, he
was dragged through prisons and concentration camps,
always in danger of his life.

On 16 November 1933, he wrote from the Marstall Prison
in Liibeck : There are all sorts of ways of frightening people,
but love grows only from humanity and justice. And without
love there can be no patriotism. Sometimes I wonder if I
shall ever live to see a fatherland based on justice. On

255

1 August 1914, there descended on my generation a great
curse, which it does not seem able to shake off/

Julius Leber was a typical representative of the generation
who, many of them influenced by their experiences in the
first war, were ready to devote all their energies to the
creation of a modern, democratic state in Germany, but who
were frustrated by a series of tragic events and circumstances,
and lost the chance ever to make something of their
visions.

Leber was a severe critic of the weaknesses and half-
measures of the Weimar Republic. He believed that a reliable
fighting force and the determined administration of justice
were essential to a live democracy; but that many of the
responsible men 'relied on a colourless idealism and lived
from hand to mouth'. In his opinion, a considerable share
of the responsibility fell on his own party, which had too
often failed to realise what was necessary and which hardly
ever allowed creative and energetic personalities to come to
the fore.

In prison, Leber wrote of his own experiences and said in
conclusion: 'The high purpose has survived nerve-racking
tensions and burdens, and political chaos : it is to build for
the working man a better future, firmly based on justice and
freedom/

After his release from the concentration camp Leber made
a living as a coal merchant in Berlin, and used the business
as a cover for his political work. He quickly took up his old
connections with friends all over the country and with many
others who wanted to throw over the regime, for he regarded
this as the most urgent and important task for which no plan
was too dangerous and no stake too high. His mental energy
and his unbounded will to action appealed particularly to
the young, who strongly supported him for leadership in the
new government, and according to the plans he was destined
for the post of Minister of the Interior. What mattered to
him was the building up of a workable democracy with a
strong government, free from narrow party doctrines, and
ready to work with all constructive and creative forces. He
has been described as one of the outstanding figures of the
German resistance movement, and Theodor Heuss said of
him in a memorial address :

"Though he had no love for the barrack square Leber had,
256

Photograpti taken In tin People's Court

fundamentally, a soldierly nature and even laughed, without
any attempt to deny it, when I told him that the Alsatian
was made of the stuff out of which Napoleon moulded his
marshals/ Gustav Dahrendorf, another friend, wrote: 'His
whole life was action. Inspired by his great moral strength
and his own strong will, he was at all stages of his life a
soldier, a politician and a human being/

257

Paul Sethe, who was present at the trial before the People's
Court on 24 October 1944 (Leber had been arrested at the
beginning of July), wrote afterwards :

'Deserving of death. . . . The man who stood there in front
of that mighty and wicked judge, had done more than merely
wonder if the war would be lost. He made no secret of the
fact that he had tried to overthrow the government. One felt
that Julius Leber had long known what his fate would be,
but he was not at all overwrought, but calm and patient. He
listened attentively to his enemy and then answered in a low
voice, but distinctly and steadily. But Julius Leber was only
human, and even though he had long known what would
happen to him, there was perhaps deep in his heart a last
vestige of hope, a thirst for life, a wish once more to taste
freedom, to see the countryside and his family. His voice
remained dear and he did not tremble. I could see from
behind, from where the spectators sit, the heels of his shoes
moving up and down (they were slightly worn down oh, well,
we are in the fifth year of the war and Leber is not a rich
man), but he remained absolutely cool and controlled.

It was dear from the beginning of the trial that the Presi-
dent in his red robe was hardly interested in convicting the
prisoner. (After all what was there to do, in such a clear-cut
case?) Freisler was not content with that : he wanted to drag
down his victim into the dust, to humiliate him, to break his
morale. His voice rang through the court, as he accused Leber
of cowardice. Would Leber be stung to reply? Would he defend
himself furiously? Only to be interrupted by that shrieking man,
to be insulted anew, to be silenced? But the prisoner listened
quietly to the raging of the judge, then answered quite calmly:
"That is an error, in reality it was so . . ." One had the impres-
sion, as the duel went on, that the r&les had been reversed,
that the man up there in the red robe began to recede, that
he was losing his nerve, that the gramophone needed wind-
ing ... Finally, he seemed disappointed, exhausted, cross. He
ended the trial. He was still the man in power. He could deploy
and command. But the other man, who now turned and went
slowly back to the prisoner's dock, was the victor. Very much
alone in that great hall, with only three or four friends, and
they in the dock and as helpless as he was, faced with malicious
opponents, judges, state lawyers, police and SS, with certain
death before him; yet he had in the end outmanoeuvred his
adversary.

'Later, when the Counsel for the Defence, a State Counsel
of course, rose to his feet, it was quite clear that Leber knew
258

what was coming, that it was fatal and final. The counsel did
not even plead extenuating circumstances. He simply stated
that his client was fully aware of what he had done, and of
what he must expect. When the sentence was read out, Julius
Leber did not turn a hair, he denied his enemy that final
pleasure. His face remained, as it had been all day, serene and
calm. He looked into the distance surely far beyond the walls
of the court . . . The world will never know what he was
thinking, but when a little later the police took him away, back
to his cell, he walked erect, as before. And in this manner too
he will have gone when he started on his last walk, to a hard
and bitter death/

Just before Julius Leber was executed on 5 January 1945,
he sent a message to his friends : 'One's own life is a proper
stake for so good and just a cause. We have done what lay
in our power. It is not our fault that all turned out like this,
and not otherwise/

259

GLAUS SCHENK GRAF von
STAUFFENBERG

15 November 190720 July 1944

have put ourselves to the test before God and before
our conscience; it must be done, for this man is evil incar-
nate/ So said Glaus Stauffenberg to Jakob Kaiser when he
explained why he and his closest advisers now believed that
no effort and no risk must be spared to remove Hitler. Jakob
Kaiser said later that he would never forget that moment,
for it gave him a sudden insight into Stauffenberg's struggle
with his own conscience.

Glaus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was thirty-six years
old when, ten months before 20 July 1944, he took it upon
himself to carry out the attempt on Hitler's life, the attempt
which had so often been thought of, and on several occasions
planned to the last detail. His decision sprang from the
synthesis of ethics and energy which was the key to his
character, and which came to the fore as he grew older and
recognised the meaning of right and justice. In 1939, he was
a young and unusually gifted regular officer and, whatever
his secret misgivings, a conscious opponent neither of the
National Socialists nor of their war. By the end of 1943 he
saw through the system 'right down to the warped and
morbid atmosphere of the eagle's nest'.

He found in Julius Leber a kindred spirit and a reliable
friend, and when the latter was arrested on 5 July 1944, he
sent a message to Frau Leber, on 17 July, saying : 'We know
where our duty lies/

* * *

Glaus Stauffenberg came from the Swabian aristocracy;
on his mother's side he was related to the Yorck family, and
was a descendant of Gneisenau. At the time of his military
training, he was regarded by many of his superior officers,
and by his contemporaries, as the most gifted subaltern of
his year, with a great future before him. In fun, he was called
'the new Schlieffen', and it was said of him that he had the
strength 'to inspire the Army and the General Staff with a
260

new spirit and to compete with the narrow military point of
view'. Later, a general of the old school described him as
the only German General Staff Officer gifted with genius'.
At the outbreak of war Stauffenberg was a 1st Lieutenant
in an armoured division, and fought in Poland and in the
French campaign. He was not at all pleased when he was
recalled to Headquarters, for he was still sure of victory and
loth to leave the fighting troops. This was a new stage of a
brilliant career, and he was called upon to deal with im-

261

portant tasks of organisation. But it was also the stage in
which his resistance to the decisions of the Ftihrer set in.
At the beginning of 1943 he was transferred to North Africa,
where he was wounded in the face, in both hands, and in the
knee by fire from a low-flying plane. For days, as he lay in
a military hospital in Carthage, he feared he might lose his
eyesight completely; in fact he kept one eye and lost his
right hand and half the left. During his convalescence his
friends remarked that he seemed to have 'a new conviction
and even greater energy than before'.

At that time, many senior officers criticised Hitler's war
strategy among themselves, and some of them passionately
condemned it, though fighting shy of decisive action against
the regime. Glaus Stauffenberg went much further than this,
for he revised his whole attitude to life. He demanded the
utmost of himself, and because he believed that the liqui-
dation of the Hitler regime must be followed by genuine
reform and by 'the building of a new, social state, which
would win the confidence of the broad mass of the people',
he sought to get in touch with the various resistance groups.
As Chief of Staff to the Army Ordnance Department, and
with the tacit consent of General Olbricht, he built up round
Berlin a military net-work on which the resistance move-
ment was to rely on the day of the revolution. The exponents
of civil resistance came to regard Stauffenberg as the proto-
type of the young officers whose own future was in no danger,
but who were inspired by the officer's sense of responsibility
towards his troops on the one hand, and by an understanding
of the obligations of one citizen towards the rest, on the
other, to take decisive action. Even the Gestapo officials who
took part in the investigation of the event of 20 July, were
not quite unmoved by his spirit, and spoke of the vision and
struggles of this man 'who wanted to combine ethical
socialism with his aristocratic traditions'.

Stauffenberg also had a hand in the plan to reach an under-
standing with the western Allies before the crumbling
eastern front broke down completely. Shortly before the
Normandy landings he considered the possibility of helping
the English through the German minefields, but the plan was
discarded as it was clear that the idea of dividing tie Allies
was at that time quite unrealistic. After the Allied troops had
actually landed, it remained only to curtail so far as possible

the catastrophe of the drifting war, the immeasurable, sense-
less sacrifice, and to form a government from the resistance
groups which even foreign countries would recognise. But
all this pre-supposed the death of Hitler.

Twice, between 10 July and 20 July, he fixed the date for
the attempt on Hitler s life, and twice his plans were defeated
by circumstances. On 20 July he eventually succeeded in
placing a time-bomb in a briefcase beside the conference
table in Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia, almost at
Hitler s feet. He left the room just before the explosion and
hurried back to Berlin to expedite the military rising which
had been so carefully planned. Back in the capital he learnt
that by a piece of incredibly bad luck, although some of his
staff had been killed, Hitler himself had escaped. Acci-
dentally, an officer who was not informed of the plot had
moved the briefcase with the bomb to the other side of the
table.

Glaus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was shot in the court-
yard of the War Office in the Bendlerstrasse. One obituary
said of him that with his wavy black hair and his tall, hand-
some figure, he was in every respect a true descendent of
Gneisenau. His wife was arrested and kept in custody for a
time, during which his fifth child was born. Stauffenberg
knew that this last mission might lead to his death, and tried
in the preceding days and weeks to .write a simple political
confession of faith embodied in an oath by which he and his
friends should dedicate themselves to the protection and
the future of all the forces of truth and right, forces long
since tried and proven and just re-awakened'.

The essence of this dedication is : We wish for a new
order which will make all Germans responsible for the state,
and which will guarantee them right and justice/

263

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(The numbers in brackets refer to the various publications listed on pp. 266-270)

THE information in this book has been compiled after
extensive research and some indication of the sources and of
the range of literature dealing with the various aspects of
German resistance may be of interest. The origin of actual
quotations is given in the text.

There are first of all statements and writings left behind by
people who are now dead, accounts given by survivors and
estimates of friends. The subject has been treated in docu-
mentary films, in broadcasts and of course in the press; and
a number of books, written from many different points of
view, have appeared since 1945. But in all probability the
last word on German resistance has not yet been written;
and the measures taken by the Nazis to obliterate every trace
of opposition have made research all the more difficult.

Soon after the collapse of Germany in 1945 there appeared
Rudolf Pechel's book (1) giving his own experiences, and
about the same time a sensational summary of the resistance
story (2) was published in the United States. A year or so
later there appeared, also in the United States, a study by
Hans Rothfels (3), of which a German edition was later
published in Zurich; this is an able account of the develop-
ment from 1933 to 1945 of the resistance which centred round
the Kreisau group, although many new facts have come to
light since its publication. Eberhard Zeller s book (4) deals
very fully with Stauffenberg and his friends, with his part in
the 20 July and, in less detail, with the previous history back
to Beck's first attempts in 1938. It is of course mainly con-
cerned with military resistance, and fundamental considera-
tion of the problems involved in resistance of any kind and
of the right and duty to resist, such as was later forthcoming
in connection with die Remer proceedings (5), is essential to
a balanced judgment. Giinther Weisenborn's book (6) deals
with many aspects of opposition to Hitler and in particular
with the activities of the left-wing and radical groups.

There are a number of books dealing with the various
personalities of the resistance movement (7) and in particular
those who were involved in the trials before the People's
Court which took place after 20 July (8). There are books
264

dealing with the persecution of the Jews (9) and many
personal accounts, including a book by Fabian von
Schlabrendorf (10), who worked closely with von Tresckow.
Urich von HasselTs diary (11) throws some light on resistance
work inside the German Foreign Office; and there are such
various sources as the controversial memoirs of Hans Bernd
Gisevius (12), a romantic biography of Canaris (IS),
Foerster's well-documented study of Beck (14) (which does
not however go beyond the outbreak of war), and books by
Kielmannsegg and Foertsch (15) on the Fritsch proceedings
in 1938, the first visible crisis between Hitler and the
Wehrmacht.

The struggle between the state and the churches has been
discussed in many of the books on resistance, and it is
perhaps remarkable, given the individual character of such
resistance, that there should also be a number of publications
devoted exclusively to it. There are for instance several books
dealing with the activity of the Protestant Church (16), a
collection of documents relating to Catholic resistance,
particularly in the diocese of Berlin (17), the memoirs of the
Protestant chaplain of Tegel prison (18); and many bio-
graphies, of which those of the parson Paul Schneider, of
Bishop Graf von Galen (19), of Father Franz Reinisch and of
Fritz Michael Gerlich (20), a journalist, are outstanding. There
are also the accounts of individual prisoners (21), among which
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's reflections, letters and poems (22) are
of particular significance; and there is a study by Inge Scholl
(23), dedicated to Hans and Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst,
Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Alexander Schmorell and their
friends; and another, compiled by friends of Kurt Huber (24)
dealing with the same story. Finally, the memoirs of
Thadden-Trieglaff and Lilje discuss other aspects of the
struggle of the churches and deal fully with the terror and
imprisonment which it involved (25).

The last letters of Helmuth von Moltke (26) are concerned
with attitudes and activities which lay somewhere between
the protests of the churches and direct political action
against Hitler. They illustrate the ideas of the Kreisau group,
whose plans for the social and Christian reform of Germany
have been fully discussed in Theodor Steltzer's articles (27).
Comparatively little has been written on socialist and trade-
union resistance and the writings of Julius Leber (28),

265

supported by notes from his friends, are an important con-
tribution. A number of revealing personal sketches have also
been published *on Leber, Leuschner, Mierendorff (29),
Haubach, Reichwein and von Moltke, Axel von Harnack's
book (30) on his brother Ernst and Emil Henk's report (31)
on the preparations for the 20 July also come under this
category.

There is in fact a wide variety of literature on the subject
of German resistance, much of it of serious historical and
political interest. The books which have been mentioned
here, to which many could be added (32), are not only
documents of recent Germany history. They are also tributes
to human integrity in an age of destruction.

1. PECHEL (Rudolf): Deutscher Widerstand (German

Resistance)-, Erlenbach-Ziirich, 1947.

2. DULLES (Allen Welsh) : Germany's Underground; pub-

lished in the U.S., 1947; translated as Verschworung
in Deutschland, Zurich, 1948.

3. ROTHFELS (Hans) : German Opposition to Hitler; pub-

lished in the U.S., 1948; translated as Die Deutsclie
Opposition gegen Hitler, Krefeld, 1949.

4. ZELLER (Eberhard) : Geist der Freiheit, Der zwanzigste

Juli (Spirit of Freedom, The Twentieth of July);
Munich, 1952.

5. The articles appeared in Geist und Tat, No. 7, 1952,

pp. 193-224; and Frankfurter Hefte, No. VI, pp. 475 ff.

6. WEISENBORN (Giinther) : Der Lautlose Auf stand, Bericht

tiber die Widerstandsbewegung des deutschen Volkes,
1933-1945. (The Silent Revolt, Report on the Resist-
ance Movement of the German People)-, Hamburg,
1953.

7. 20 Juli 1944; published by Hans Royce, Bonn, 1953.

8. Die Wahrheit iiber den 20 Juli (The Truth about the

20 July); published by Eugen Budde and Peter
Liitsches, Diisseldorf, 1952.

9. Den Unvergessenen, Opfer des Wdhns 1933 bis 1945

(To The Unforgotten, Victims of Madness, 1933-1945);

Heidelberg, 1952.
10. SCHLABRENDORFF (Fabian von) : Offiziere gegen Hitler

(Officers against Hitler); published by Gero von

Schulze-Gavernitz, Zurich, 1947 (2nd edition, 1950).
266

11. HASSELL (Ulrich von): Vom anderen Deutschland

(The Other Germany); extracts from his diaries, 1938-
1944; Zurich, 1946.

12. GISEVIUS (Hans Bernd) : Bis zum bitteren Ende (To

the Bitter End); 2 vols.; Zurich, 1946 (2nd edition
Hamburg, 1948).

13. ABSHAGEN (K. H.); Canaris, Patriot und Weltbiirger

(Canaris, Patriot and Cosmopolitan); Stuttgart, 9th-
llth thousand 1950.

14. FOERSTER (Wolfgang): Generdoberst Ludwig Beck,

Sein Kampf gegen den Krieg (General Ludwig Beck,
his Struggle against the War); two editions, Munich,
1953.

15. KIELMANNSEGG (Johann A. Graf von): Der Fritsch-

prozess, 1938, Ablauf und Hintergrilnde (The Fritsch
Trial, 1938, the Proceedings and the Background);
Hamburg, 1949; FOERTSCH (Hermann): Schuld und
Verhiingnis, die Fritschkrise als Wendepunkt der
nationaLsozidistischen Zeit (The Fritsch Case as the
Turning-point of the National Socialist Era); Stutt-
gart, 1951.

16. Kirchliches Jahrbuch fiir die Evangelische Kirche in

Deutschland, 193S-1944 (Ecclesiastical Yearbook of
the Protestant Churches in Germany, 1933-1944);
Gutersloh, 1948; Und folget ihrem Glauben nach,
Gedenkbuch fiir die Blutzeugen Bekennenden Kirche
(Follow Them in Their Faith: in Memory of the
Martyrs of the Confessional Church); published by
Bernhard H. Forck, Stuttgart, 1949; HERMELINK
(Heinrich) : Kirche im Kampf, Dokumente des Wider-
stands und des Aufbaus der Evangelischen Kirche in
Deutschland von 1933 bis 1945 (The Church Militant :
Documents concerning the Resistance and Renais-
sance of the Protestant Church in Germany from
1933-1945}; Stuttgart, 1950; NBEMOLLER (Wilhelm):
Kampf und Zeugnis der Bekennenden Kirche (Struggle
and Testimony of the Confessional Church); Bielefeld,
1948.

17. Dokumente aus dem Kampf der Katholischen Kirche

im Bistum Berlin gegen den Nationalsozialismus
(Documents concerning the Struggle of the Catholic
Church against National Socialism in the Diocese of

267

Berlin)-, published by the Episcopal Secretariat of
Berlin, 1946; Blutzeugen des Bistums Berlin (Martyrs
of the Diocese of Berlin); published by Heinz Kiihn,
Berlin, 1952; ADOLPH (Walter): Im Schatten des
Galgens, zum Gedachtnis der Blut-Zeugen in der
nationdsozidistischen Kirchenverfolgung (In the
Shadow of the Gallows: in Memory of the Martyrs of
the National Socialist Persecution of the Church);
Berlin, 2nd edition 1953; Wo Seine Zeugen sterben,
ist sein Reich (Where His Witnesses die, is His
Kingdom); letters of the executed parsons of Liibeck
and reports of eye-witnesses, compiled by Josef
Schafer S.J., Hamburg, 1946.

18. POELCHAU (Harald): Die letzten Stunden, Erinnerun-

gen des Gefangnispfarrers Harald Poelchau (Their
Last Hours: Memoirs of a Prison Chaplain), Berlin,
1949.

19. Der Prediger von Buchenwald, Das Martyrium Paul

Schneiders (The Preacher of Buchenwdd, the Martijr-
dom of Paul Schneider), published by Heinrich Vogel,
Berlin, 1953; PORTMANN (Heinrich): Kardinal von
Galen, ein Gottesmann seiner Zeit (Cardinal von
Gden, a Churchman of his Time)', 2nd edition,
Miinster, 1950.

20. KREUTZBERG (Heinrich) : Franz Reinisch, ein Martyrer

unserer Zeit (Franz Reinisch, a Martyr of our Time);
Limburg, 1952; ARETIN (Erwein Freiherr von) : Fritz
Michael Gerlich, Ein Martyrer unserer Tage (Fritz
Michael Gerlich, a Martyr of Our Days); Munich,
1949.

21. Examples are: Poems by Hans Lehnert and Hilde

Meisel, Hamburg, 1950; METZGER (Max Josef):
Gefangenschaftsberichte (Reports from Prison); intro-
duced and published by Hannes Backer, Meitingen
bei Augsburg, 2nd edition 1948.

22. BONHOEFFER (Dietrich): Widerstand und Ergebung:

Brief e und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft (Resistance
and Humility: Letters and Notes from Prison)-, Eber-
hard Bethge, Munich, 1951; Auf dem Wege zur
Freiheit, Dietrich und Klaus Bonhoeffer, Gedichte und
Brief e aus der Haft, Berlin, 1946.
268

23. SCROLL (Inge): Die Weisse Rose (The White Rose)-,

Frankfurt, 7th edition 1952.

24. Kurt Huber zum Gedachtnis, Bildnis eines Menschen,

Denkers und Forschers (In Memory of Kurt Huber :
Portrait of a Man, a Thinker and a Scholar); by his
friends; published by Clara Huber, Regensburg, 1947.

25. THADDEN-TRIEGLAFF (Reinhold von): Auf Verlorenem

Posten? : Ein Laie erlebt den evangelischen Kirchen-
kampf in Hitlerdeutschland (A Lost Cause? : a layman
witnesses the struggle of the Protestant Church in
Hitlers Germany); Tubingen, 1948; LILJE (Hanns) : Im
Finsteren Tal (In the Valley of Shadows); Niirnberg,
1947.

26. MOLTKE (Helmuth James Graf von) : Letzte Brief e aus

dem Gefdngnis Tegel (Last Letters from Tegel
Prison); Berlin, 4th edition 1953.

27. STELTZER (Theodor): Von deutscher Politik, Doku-

mente Aufsatze und Vortrdge (Documents^ Articles
and Lectures concerning German Politiks); publ.
Friedrich Minssen, FranldFurt-am-Main, 1949.

28. LEBER (Julius): Ein Mann geht seinen Weg (A Man

goes on his Way), writings, speeches and letters of
Julius Leber; compiled and published by his friends,
Berlin, 1952.

29. Blick in die Welt, Numbers 7, 9, 10, 11; publ. Kasimir

Edschmid, Darmstadt, 1947; ZUCKMAYER (Carl): Carlo
Mierendorff, Portrdt eines deutschen Sozialisten
(Carlo Mierendorff, Portrait of a German Socialist);
Berlin, 1947.

30. HARNACK (Axel von): Ernst von Harnack, 1888-1945:

ein Kampfer fur Deutschlands Zukunft (Ernst von
Harnack, 1888-1945: a Fighter for the Future of
Germany); Schwenningen-am-Neckar, 1951.

31. HENK (Emil) : Die Tragodie des 20 Juli 1944, ein Beitrag

zur politischen Vorgeschichte (The Tragedy of 20 Juli
1944 : a Retrospective Contribution); Heidelberg, 2nd
edition 1946; SCHLOTTERBECK (Friedrich) : Je dunJder
die Nacht, desto heller die Sterne (The Darker the
Night, the Brighter the Stars), memoirs of a German
working man; Zurich, 1945 and Berlin, 1948.

32. For example : BRAUBACH (Max) : Der Weg zum 20 Juli,

a report of his research work, published in Veroffent-

lichungen der Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Forschung des
Landes Nordrhein Westfalen, No. 13 (1953) and also
a supplement to Das Parlament, 15 July 1953; CONZE
(Werner): Die deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler,
published in Politische Literatur 5/6 (1953), pp. 210-
215; STADTMULLER (Georg): Zur Geschichte der
Deutschen Militdropposition 1938-1945 (On the His-
tory of German Military Resistance, I9S8-I94S); pub-
lished in Saeculmn IV, No. 4 (1953), pp. 437-449.

270

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